Camille Desmoulins, a biography

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CAMILLE DESMOULINS
A BIOGRAPHY

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C AMI LLE
DESMOULINS

A BIOGRAPHY

BY VIOLET METHLEY

WITH FIVE PLATES IN PHOTOGRAVURE

NEW YORK
E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY

MCMXV

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Printed in Great Britain.

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w CONTENTS

PAGE

PART ONE: THE NORTH WIND 17

PART TWO: THE WEST WIND 91

PART THREE : THE EAST WIND 155

PART FOUR : THE SOUTH WIND 223

BIBLIOGRAPHY 319

INDEX 321

LIST OF PLATES

CAMILLE DESMOULINS, HIS WIFE AND SON Frontispiece ^

From the Painting by David in the Musee de Versailles.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS Facing page 24 ^

From the Painting by Rouillard in the Musee de Versailles.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS „ „ 96 -

From the Painting by Boze in the Musee de Chartres.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS „ „ 160 **

From a Painting in the Musee Carnavalet,

CAMILLE DESMOULINS „ „ 232 -

From an Etching after a Miniature.

PART ONE
THE NORTH WIND

" Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's Northern Wind."
J. G. Whittier. " Mountain Pictures."

ON an early spring day in the year 1760 a son
was born to Maitre Jean-Benoit-Nicholas
Desmoulins, civil and criminal lieutenant-
general of the Bailiwick o£ Guise, and to
Dame Marie-Magdeleine Godart, his wife.

No doubt there was great rejoicing in M. Des-
moulins' small whitewashed house in the Rue Grand
Pont. It is only once in a lifetime that a father can
celebrate the birth of his eldest son.

The following day, March 3rd, the little boy was
baptised in the Church of St. Pierre and St. Paul, and
received the names of Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoist.
Years later, in writing to his father, he was to say with
Republican enthusiasm : " Did you guess that I
should be a Roman, when you christened me Lucius,
Sulpicius, Camillus ? "

The little white house with the slated roof stands,
or, at least, stood quite recently, in the street '' in
front of the Place d'Armes." The low-ceiled
panelled rooms remained a few years ago much
as they were when Camille played in them as a
child.

Nevertheless, the memories of that " gamin of
genius " which linger in the town of his birth, after
the lapse of a century and a half, are very vague and
scanty. In 1871, when the historian, Jules Claretie,
visited Guise, he could find few people who had any
remembrance of the family of Desmoulins. Their
house was easily identified, some of the older residents
recalled dim traditions of Camille's tempestuous

19

20 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

boyhood, a fly-blown portrait was discovered amongst
heterogeneous rubbish in the attics of the town-hall —
and that was all.

In his native town, a statue of Camille Desmoulins
has since then been erected. Such a reminder is not
needed by France, and by the world. There was that
touch of genius in the man which makes him as much
a bodily presence now in his writings as he was in the
Paris of 1789. Whilst we read, we seem to feel him
very near ; his reckless laugh, his hurried, hesitant
speech are almost audible. . . . He lives still for us,
one of the most intimate and virile figures of the
great Revolutionary period, yet another of the " boys
who will not grow up " of the world's history.

Camille's father, as we have said, was lieutenant-
general of the Bailiwick of Guise, a sufficiently dignified
and honourable post. For the rest, he was a country
lawyer and something of a scholar besides, who toiled
in his leisure moments at the compilation of a learned
and weighty " Encyclopedia of Law " which was
destined never to arrive at publication.

We have a very good portrait of M. Desmoulins the
elder. It may be found in those letters which passed
between him and his son during the years which
Camille spent in Paris. It is impossible not to admire
and reverence the man who is revealed to us. He is
wise and just, essentially well-balanced and even-
tempered — he has every quality, in short, which
Camille lacked.

The father and son represent two distinct types of
the Picard character. In M. Desmoulins the elder
was exemplified that sound common sense and shrewd
reason which should pertain to the province of Calvin,
St. Simon and Condorcet.

As to the younger man, he belonged to the breed
which an old author, C. M. Saugrain, described in his
" Nouveau Voyage de France."

Writing as he did in the year 1720, and speaking of

THE NORTH WIND 21

the Picards in general, M. Saugrain's words might
well apply to Camille in particular.

" We believe that the name of Picardy," he says, " is derived
from the fact that the Picards are easily piqued or offended.
... It is commonly reported that the Picards are hot-headed,
and as they are angered with very little -reason, one willingly
leaves their province for fear of being involved in quarrels ;
for the rest, they are very sincere."

Camille often found his father lacking in ambition,
and over-fond of deliberation ; there was even one
period when he thought him callous and hard. But
these were only temporary misunderstandings. A
fundamental love subsisted between the father and
son which nothing really affected, a love which only
grew stronger until death separated them.

We know very little of Dame Marie-Magdeleine
Godart, the mother of Camille. That little is well
summed up in the few sentences written by M.
Desmoulins to his son on the day of her death, and
received by that son when he was himself in the very
shadow of the scaffold.

" I have lost the half of myself. Your mother is no more.
. . . She is worthy of all our regrets ; she loved you tenderly."

It is an epitaph of which no woman would have
cause to be ashamed.

M. Desmoulins had four other children besides
Camille, two sons and two daughters.

It is evident that Camille himself, in later years,
knew curiously little about these younger brothers of
his, Du Bucquoy and Semery.

All, practically, that v/e can learn of them is con-
tained in a letter from M. Desmoulins to his eldest
son in 1792. This letter was published by the " Journal
de Vervins " in 1884, and it was plainly written in
answer to one of Camille's.

" You ask me, my son," says M. Desmoulins, " for the name
of your brother, Du Bucquoy, as well as for that of Semery. The

22 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

former is called Armand Jean Louis Domitille, who was born on
May 5th, 1765. For the past seven years he has served in the
late Royal Roussillon cavalry regiment, or the iith Regiment
of the Army of the Midi, and which I beHeve is either in the
interior at Saumur or at Saint-Jean-d'Angely, for I have had
no news of him for the last twelve months.

" The latter is named Lazare Nicolas Norbert Fehcite, born
on June 6th, 1769, and for the past two years in the loth
BattaHon of Chasseurs, late Gevaudan, with the Army of the
North, in which he shows much zeal. He tells me in his last
letter that he is a forlorn sentinel in a wood, and congratulates
you on the birth of a son.

" ' As for me,' he says, ' I also am married. My wife is a
musket, and I take greater care of her than of myself.' "

A short time after this letter was written, in 1793,
Desmoulins Du Bucquoy was killed in the Vendean war.

The younger brother, the " forlorn sentinel in a
wood," was captured at the siege of Maestricht, and
from that time his family seem to have lost sight of
him and to have believed him to be dead. He was,
however, known to be living in 1807.

It is a plain record, this, of the lives of two
honest soldiers of the Republic. Camille, in the heat
of his own battle at Paris, fighting with his own weapon,
was to envy v\^hat he thought to be the cleaner warfare
of his brothers, and to wish that he could exchange
his pen for a sword.

The two sisters were named Marie Emilie Toussaint
and Anne Clotilde Pelagic Marie. The elder, born in
1763, was married twice, first to a M. Morcy and
secondly to a M. Lagrange. She was still alive in
1837. The younger, who was born in 1767, became
the wife of a M. Lemoine. Beyond these bare facts
we know little or nothing of their after lives.

Camille was first sent, whilst quite a little boy,
to a religious boarding-school at Cateau-Cambresis.
Amongst his schoolfellows there was his first cousin,
Marie Joseph Benoit Godart, son of Godart Brisieux,
Madame Desmoulin's brother.

THE NORTH WIND 23

It would seem that from his very earHest youth
Camille showed unusual precocity and intelligence.
His father, although so diffident on his own account,
was not by any means lacking in ambition for his son,
as he watched the development of the boy's talents.
He planned that Camille should become a great
lawyer, an advocate to the Parliament of Paris, but
unfortunately the money necessary for a thorough
education was not forthcoming.

The Desmoulins were a good bourgeois family,
not in any way aristocratic, but what might be called
" well-connected." M. Desmoulins, moreover, was a
comparatively poor man. His wife only brought him
a small dowry, and he had to provide for a growing
family.

It seemed that Camille's brilliant career would end
very prematurely, that the boy must resign himself to
become, like his father before him, a quiet, provincial
man of the law. But the life of a country lawyer was
not for Camille Desmoulins.

A certain aristocratic connection of the family, one
M. de Viefville des Essarts, came to the rescue and
obtained for the little boy a scholarship at the College
Louis-le-Grand in Paris.

This was exactly the opportunity for which M.
Desmoulins had longed, and one day in the month of
October Camille left his peaceful home in Guise, and
set out in the Noyon stage-coach for his new life in
Paris.

One can imagine the excitement of the quick-
witted, impressionable child at this entry into the
strange world of France's capital city, a world where
men thought and acted in such a different fashion from
the citizens of Guise. Probably, however, Camille
soon adapted himself to his changed surroundings ;
his was not a shy or retiring temperament, and he
always made friends easily and whole-heartedly.

A modern writer, M. Georges Cain, himself a pupil

24 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

at Louis-le-Grand, describes his old school in no very
enthusiastic terms. He speaks of it as black and
gloomy enough, with its heavy-leaved gate of dread
memories leading into the Rue St. Jacques. » He tells
of its moss-grown playgrounds, its smoky class-rooms,
its punishment chambers high up under the roof,
where unfortunate culprits were stifled in summer and
frozen in winter.

The college was structurally very much the same in
Camille's day, although the lapse of a century may
have served to increase its discomforts. In any case,
it would appear that this boy's school life was a very
happy one. In after years he always looked back to
that time with tenderness and regret.

The College of Louis-le-Grand was at this period
very fortunate in its head-master. Many of his pupils
bear witness to the scholarship of the Abbe Berardier,
and the love which they retained for him all through
their after lives proves in itself that he was worthy to
win it.

We know well what were Camille's feelings towards
his teacher. Years afterwards, when the pupil was at
the height of his fame, when he had won the love of
Lucile Duplessis, when, as he said himself, he had
nothing left to desire, he would have no other priest
save his old schoolmaster to marry him and to preach
the wedding sermon.

Many of Camille's contemporaries at College were
destined like him to play prominent, although widely
differing parts, in the days which followed. There
were at least three who became prominent journalists ;
J. S. Peltier of Nantes, Stanislas Freron, afterwards
Camille's friend and collaborator, and Louis Francois
Suleau, the brilliant and unfortunate Royalist writer,
whom Camille christened the " Don Quixote of the
aristocracy," and who was to die so miserably at the
hands of a woman.

There was another of Camille's school companions

THE NORTH WIND 25

who bore a far more famous name than these ; he
was Maximilian Robespierre.

Somehow, it is difficult to imagine that Robespierre
and Camille can ever have been friends — friends, that
is, in the true sense of the word. Yet it is undoubted
that they had a real aifection for each other, then and
later, and Charlotte Robespierre could write in her
memoirs : — •

" I know that my brother loved Camille Desmoullns dearly,
they having studied together. . . , My brother's friendship
to him was very strong : he has often told me that Camille
was perhaps the one of all the prominent revolutionists whom
he loved the best, after our younger brother and Saint-Just."

The two men — and therefore the two boys — were
so utterly unlike in character that it must indeed
have been a case of the attraction of opposites.
Possibly what they found to admire in each other was
the possession of those particular qualities which they
themselves lacked.

Robespierre, at least in after years, may have
admired and envied Camille's power of expressing
himself in his writings, and thereby moving the
very souls of men ; perhaps he may have envied
yet more his power of inspiring love.

And Camille ? It is possible that he, who described
himself, by one of his touches of genius, as the weather-
cock, showing the influence of each changing wind,
it is possible that he may have envied Robespierre's
self-sufficient, unbending nature, " which stood four-
square to every wind that blew."

Be it as it may, the two always spoke of each other
with affection, even up to the end — that tragic end,
when Maximilian, " my old comrade," proved so
plainly what was the worth of his friendship.

Like many, one might almost say, like most young
writers, Camille's first literary attempts took the form
of verse-making. Indeed, he always believed that he

2.6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

was by nature a poet ; as he said at the end of his Hfe,
writing from prison to his wife : "I was born to make
verses." Nevertheless, his own opinion notwithstand-
ing, one is bound to confess that there is little or no
trace of genius in such of Camille's poetry as has sur-
vived to this day. One of his earhest attempts at
versifying belongs to this period. It is a poem,
written on the occasion of his leaving college, and
while the verses are irreproachable in their sentiments,
they are wholly undistinguished from a literary point
of view.

It was certainly fortunate for the world that Camille
gave up his ambition to become a poet, when he dis-
covered within himself that power which made him
finally one of the most brilliant journalists of all time.

During the years which he spent at Louis-le-Grand
Camille received a very sound classical education.
His knowledge of the great Latin authors was both
wide and comprehensive, and it had an immense effect
upon the literary style of his later years.

It was the fashion in those days for writers to over-
burden their pages with quotations and references
from the classics. Ancient Rome and its manners of
speech and thought were very much in the mode, even
before the Revolution.

There was little or nothing pedantic, however, in
Camille's use of classical tags and phrases. The atmo-
sphere of Rome had become, as it were, his native air.
As a consequence, his quotations have a spontaneity
and an aptness which is found in the writings of no
one of his contemporaries.

Camille, as we shall see later, could take the dry
bones of a Latin historian, and make of them a sentient
thing, his own, yet not his own. Perhaps his greatest
literary work is that third number of the " Vieux
Cordelier," which directly brought about his downfall.
Yet it is little more than a paraphrase from Tacitus,
transcribed with that touch of genius which struck

THE NORTH WIND 27

at the very heart o£ the " System o£ Terror " of which
the Roman " Law of Suspect " was but a prototype.

It was at College that Camille gained that scholar-
ship which later became such a powerful weapon in
his skilful hands : but it was not only the literary
craftsmanship of the great writers of Rome and
Athens which stirred him to admiration ; he was
moved to a deep and lasting enthusiasm for the spirit
of the laws of the early Republics. It was not for
nothing that this boy wore out six copies of Vertot's
" Revolutions Romaines " and carried with him every-
where a volume of the " Philippics " of Cicero.

We can best judge of the effects of this education
from Camille's own words in 1793. In his " L'Histoire
Secrete de la Revolution " he makes the well-known
statement : " There were perhaps ten of us Re-
publicans in Paris on July 12th, 1789," and in a foot-
note he adds, in fuller explanation of this assertion :
" These republicans were, for the most part, young
men who, nourished on the study of Cicero at College,
were thereby impassioned in the cause of liberty. We
were educated in the ideas of Rome and Athens and in
the pride of republicanism, only to live abjectly under a
monarchy in the reign, so to speak, of a Claudian or a
Vitellius. Unwise and fatuous government, to suppose
that we, filled with enthusiasm for the elders of the
Capitol, could regard without horror the vampires of
Versailles, or admire the past without condemning
the present ; ulteriora mirari, praesentia secutura."

In this passage Camille uses the word " republican "
in its literal sense, the sense in which we now under-
stand it, namely, as one who wishes for a republican
form of government.

Nevertheless it is impossible to realise the point
of view of the men of that day unless we are aware
that the term was habitually used during the eighteenth
century in what can only be described as a theoretical
and abstract way.

28 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

M. Aulard, in his masterly " Political History of the
French Revolution," presents this aspect clearly and
succinctly, after the most patient and exhaustive
study of the political writings of the period. He en-
tirely discredits the existence of a Republican party
in France before 1789, but he beheves that the illusion
has arisen through the frequent employment of the
word " Republican " to denote those who were not
in the least desirous of establishing a republic in France,
but who hated despotism and desired some system of
general social reform. In fact, as he says, there had
arisen amongst the French " a republican state of
mind, which was expressed by republican words and
attitudes."

" A republican state of mind " — nothing could
express more exactly the spirit of the time. It was a
habit of thought which spread through all classes of
society, from the Court downwards.

Versailles set the example, when it played with the
fire which was afterwards to destroy it. Franklin and
Washington could not be made the fashion without
that for which they stood becoming fashionable also.
La Fayette, as the hero of the populace, represented
the cause for which he fought in America.

It is a generally accepted fact that the germ of the
French Revolution was carried across the Atlantic
by that band of ardent young men who returned to
find themselves the idols of the French people, after
lending their swords and their fortunes to the support
of a rebellion against kingly authority.

Yet there was also inspiration to be drawn from a
source nearer at hand in point of geography, if further
removed by time. Although Camille and those who,
like him, were of a classical turn of mind, might seek
for examples amongst the heroes of antiquity, the
leaders of the modern English Revolution were well-
known and well-admired by the liberal Frenchmen
of the reign of Louis XVI. Pym and Hampden were

THE NORTH WIND 29

names to conjure with amongst the leaders of the new
thought in France, and the works of Algernon Sidney
were even more widely read on the Continent than in
his own native country.

It was then in this atmosphere of theoretical re-
publicanism that Camille Desmoulins grew from a boy
to a man. The weathercock now for the first time
vibrated to the touch of that keen northern wind,
blowing from across the Atlantic, and telling of the
young nation that had so lately broken the chains of
royalty.

The wind was only a light breeze as yet, but it
whispered of freedom and the downfall of tyranny, it
recalled to Camille the memory of the spacious days
of antiquity, it was the precursor of the storm,
heralding that great hurricane which was so soon to
sweep over France, overturning all things, both old
and new, which opposed its course.

II

IT was at the beginning of the year 1784 that
Camille finally left the College Louis-le-Grand
and returned to Guise for a time, to study there
for the Paris Bar. He was now twenty-four
years old, at about the age, in fact, when modern
Englishmen leave the University.

Like his comrade Robespierre, Camille probably
received a handsome gratuity when he left the
College. This the administrators were in the habit of
bestowing upon impecunious students who had
particularly distinguished themselves.

His teachers prophesied a brilliant career for the
young man, and doubtless he thoroughly agreed with
them. Self-depreciation was never one of Camille's
faults, and unquestionably at this time he had an
extremely good opinion of his own talents and
capabilities.

He returned then to Guise, to his father's house,
under the impression that he was certainly a person to
be reckoned with, and expecting to be received with
a certain amount of awe and consideration. It was
not long before he made a discovery which has fallen
to the lot of many another before and since, that
discovery to which he afterwards bitterly referred in a
letter to his father, when he said : " I know that no-
body is a prophet in his own country."

The humdrum, conservative Guisards were by no
means prepared to take Camille at his own somewhat
high valuation. More than that, he both shocked and
displeased them, and probably fully intended to do so.

30

THE NORTH WIND 31

We may feel quite sure that he did not keep his dis-
quieting opinions to himself ; it was not in his nature
to do this, then or afterwards.

The town of Guise in 1784 was old-world and old-
fashioned in the extreme. Even as late as the year
1871, it struck M. Claretie as a " city of the past,
of strange, calm, sleepy aspect." Narrow streets of
sedate houses, the dwellings of prosperous, hard-
working citizens were dominated by the great, fortified
citadel, which towered, an emblem of decaying feudal
power, on a steep ascent above the town.

Certainly Guise was not the place to encourage
new ideas ; the old ones were quite good enough for
these staid, well-to-do people, occupied with their
own private business and pleasure.

Later it was to be otherwise. The changes in which
Camille was to be so actively concerned made them-
selves felt even in the quiet backwater of his native
town. There came a day when Guise, in that Revolu-
tionary craze for giving new names to old things, was
to re-christen itself Reunion-sur-Oise. One cannot
imagine that the ultra-modern fashion became the old
town well.

But all this was in the hidden future. In
the meantime, rumours and hints have come down
to us which prove that Camille was considered
to be a very firebrand by the honest townsfolk of
Guise. They thought him a dangerous revolution-
ary, one whom quiet folk might well be very shy
of asking to their homes, who could not be trusted
not to lead their sons astray, or make love to their
daughters.

It is very likely that their fears were well-founded ;
in both these respects Camille had undoubtedly great
capabilities, from their point of view. It was rather
as though an undergraduate were to return to his
home in a sleepy English country town loudly voicing
his opinions as a red-hot Socialist and flaunting scarlet

32 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

neckties and Fabian pamphlets in the faces of his
quiet law-abiding friends and relations.

Even while quite a small boy, during his first holi-
days from College, Camille had succeeded in scandal-
ising the good townsfolk of Guise. It is said that one
day he was arguing so loudly with his brothers and
sisters, and declaiming so vehemently against tyranny,
that the Prince de Conde, who was the owner of much
property in the neighbourhood and who had come to
see M. Desmoulins on business, took the small orator
by the ear and pushed him out into the street.

A story is told of Camille's behaviour in later years
at a respectable provincial dinner-party which gives
a fair idea of the young man's attitude towards his
neighbours at this time.

M. Jules Claretie, Camille's painstaking biographer,
believes this anecdote to be much exaggerated in the
version given by M. Edouard Fleury, but it probably
rests on more than a slight foundation of truth,
and it is, moreover, quite consistent with Camille's
character as we know him.

He was staying at the house of his relation, Madame
Godart, who lived at the village of Wiege, near Guise.
A few local celebrities had been invited to meet the
young man, whose talents were apparently admired,
although distrusted.

After dinner, one of those present proceeded to make
fun of Camille's well-known and loudly-expressed
opinions ; it seems that the young people of Guise
looked upon it as a fine joke to endeavour to provoke
the hot-headed collegian into one of his fits of anger.
This time the plan succeeded only too well. To the
day of his death, Camille could not bear to be laughed
at, and he was provoked past bearing by his com-
panions' gibes at his Republican views.

It is said that at last he lost his temper completely,
flung his napkin at the head of his opponent, and sprang
upon the table, amidst the ruins of the glass and china.

THE NORTH WIND 33

He proceeded to harangue the guests from this im-
provised tribune, arousing the laughter of some, and
the undisguised anger of others.

Stammering, with his words falHng over each other
in his wild excitement, Camille poured forth his ideas,
talking of an ideal Republic, of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity, all of which things sounded to his amazed
hearers like so many empty phrases, a mere wind
of words.

Yet, after all, it was only a kind of burlesque re-
hearsal of that great scene five years later, in the
gardens of the Palais Royal.

One can well imagine, however, the scandal which
such proceedings as these must have caused in quiet,
law-abiding Guise. One can picture the townsfolk
shaking their worthy heads over the doings of this
scapegrace of a Camille, repeating the story of his
latest prank, exaggerated no doubt, but none the less
thrilling for that, prophesying disgrace to the good
name of Desmoulins.

It is to this period of his life that Camille's first
love aftair — of a kind — would seem to belong. He had
a certain affection for a little cousin of his, Flore Godart,
but she was only a child, some nine years younger than
himself. Camille accordingly calmly announced his
intention of waiting until the girl was old enough
to marry.

But the Godart family opposed the whole idea of
this match very strongly on the grounds of " Camille's
political opinions and the dangers to the durability and
happiness of this union which were to be anticipated."

Rose Flore Amelie Godart was not to be the
wife of Camille Desmoulins. Only a short time
afterwards he met the one woman who was really
to win his heart, and from that day it is to be
feared that poor Flore had no real existence as far as
Camille was concerned. In 1792 she was married to
M. Tarrieux de Taillan.

34 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Nevertheless, years later, we catch a faint echo o£
the old dead-and-gone love affair. Lucile, Camille's
wife, has heard some rumour of the business, and she is
delightfully and quite unreasonably jealous. Here is
what Camille himself writes to his father on July 9th,

1793 '—

" You complain that I do not write to you. . . . Lucile is
so frightened that I shall be seized with a desire to embrace
you that she would be alarmed if she saw me writing ; so I am
taking advantage of the office provided by the Committee of
War, of which I have been made Secretary, to write to you
freely without her seeing over my shoulder that I am writing
to Guise, I imagine that the cause of her anxiety is the
recollection of some cousin who has been mentioned to her."

In the meanwhile, the time which Camille spent at
his birthplace was not wasted. He was industriously
studying law, and he took his bachelor's degree in the
September of 1784. There is no doubt that these
legal studies were an advantage to him in his future
career. They gave him that reasoning faculty, that
power of setting forth a case which he undoubtedly
possessed, and without which his brilliancy and wit
would have lacked that ballast which made his argu-
ments carry conviction to his readers.

Camille seems to have passed his examinations
creditably ; he became a licentiate in the spring of
1785, and was sworn later in the same year as an
advocate to the Parliament of Paris.

Having attained to this position, he was now, of
course, obliged to take up his residence permanently
in the capital, and we have no reason to suppose that
he felt any particular regret at leaving Guise.

He had been keenly disappointed by his reception
in his birthplace. Even after he became a successful
man, Camille never quite lost a certain feeling of
soreness where the Guisards were concerned.

We read this plainly in his letters to his father.
Although he protests that he takes no further interest

THE NORTH WIND 35

in Guise, that he wishes to cut himself off from the
provincial narrowness of his native town, one can see
plainly beneath the surface of his v/ords that he is
eager to prove to his unappreciative fellow-townsmen
that their estimate of him was not the true one.
One of the sharpest spurs to his ambition was the
desire to make a great name in order that Guise might
be humbled and be forced to allow that Camille
Desmoulins was a son of whom she might well be
proud.

With this in his mind it must have been very galling
to Camille when the discovery was borne home to him
that he was unfitted by nature for the career to which
he had been destined from his childhood.

Although he was now vv^hat we should call a barrister
at the Paris Bar, his briefs were few and unprofitable.
Camille was from the first doomed to failure as a
pleader. He had no oratorical gifts, and although
occasionally he could overcome his hesitation and
express himself clearly and well, it was only when he
was carried quite outside himself, under very ex-
ceptional circumstances, that he could forget his
nervousness.

It is curious that one who as a writer was extra-
ordinarily fluent, expressing himself readily and
without hesitation, should have been practically
incapable of an extemporary speech. In later years
he wrote down beforehand all the addresses which he
made in the Convention or at the Jacobin Club, and
these orations of his were, moreover, composed in an
entirely different style from that which he used in
his journalistic or literary work. They are stilted,
academic, wholly without spontaneity.

Camilla's voice, when he attempted to speak in
public, was harsh and unmusical ; a certain physical
weakness in the chest and throat would be sufficient
to account for this, and he later often referred to this
delicacy as an excuse for not speaking more often

36 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

in the Convention. Besides, he stammered sHghtly,
although this did not proceed from any malformation
or actual impediment of speech.

It was rather that kind of hesitation which is so
often to be observed in nervous or excitable people ;
it would really seem to arise from the fact that their
thoughts spring up too rapidly to be put into coherent
speech.

Camille's stammer took the form, as many contempo-
rary writers tell us, of a deprecatory " hon-hon ! "
before beginning to speak, a trick which afterwards
earned for him his wife's affectionate nickname of
" Monsieur Hon."

Camille soon found that he could not hope to make a
living at the Bar, although we learn that MM. Per dry,
de Denisard, Perrin and Forget gave him a few cases.
He was forced to earn a little money by executing
law-copying for those others of his profession who
were more fortunate than himself, and by drawing
up petitions for the procurators at threepence-
halfpenny each. One can guess how galling this
drudgery must have been to a man of his tempera-
ment.

Very few and scanty are the facts which can be
discovered respecting Camille's life in Paris, during
the period between 1784 and 1789. Nobody thought
of recording his doings at that time ; he was of little
or no interest to anyone except himself.

Moreover, when he had become a famous man, he
preferred to be entirely silent on the subject of these
years. They were no source of pride to him, and he
even tried to cover and hide them by stating, quite
falsely, in 1790, that he had been residing in the Rue
de Theatre Frangais for the " last six years."

As a matter of fact, we do not really know with any
exactness where he lived during those early days in
Paris. It is true that he says himself, in a letter to
his father, that his lodgings were- in the Hotel de

THE NORTH WIND 37

Pologne, but, as M. Lenotre tells us, at that time
there were no less than three Hotels de Pologne in
Paris. However, from other indications it would seem
that Camille lived in that one which was situated
in the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arcs.

It is possible to deduct from his letters, and still
more from their discontinuance at certain periods,
that Camille did not remain in the capital during the
whole of the time between 1784 and 1789. Probably,
when life became unbearably hard and money im-
possibly scanty, he returned to Guise for a time,
doubtless to be comforted by his mother and reproved
by his father, both alike for his good.

It seems plain that it was not until after the opening
of the States-General that Camille absolutely and
decidedly settled in Paris, with the avowed intention,
as he says, of " abandoning Guise definitely."

Egotistical as Camille was, and by no means in-
clined to self-depreciation by nature, he must have
sometimes lost faith in that self of his during those
weary years. He must have suffered under a sense
of failure, as he wandered through the streets, watch-
ing the men around him, independent or with others
dependent upon them, whilst he could scarcely keep
his own body and soul together.

Sometimes he would forget his miserable life for a
time whilst he sat drinking and arguing on the affairs
of France and the universe in the famous Cafe
Procope (now the Cafe Voltaire), where his portrait
is still preserved.

Sometimes he would spend happy, innocent days
with the Duplessis family, to whom he had been
introduced as a boy by his college friend Stanislas
Freron. M. Duplessis was kind and good-natured,
Madame, his wife, was still young and pretty, and
they had two charming little daughters, mere children
as yet, named Annette and Lucile. Occasionally
Camille would spend Sunday with them at their

38 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

pretty country house of Bourg-la-Reine, where they
would picnic in the fields amongst the long grass and
play childish games to amuse the little girls. Late in
the sweet summer evenings they would return to Paris
in a rough country cart, pleasantly sleepy after their
day in the open air.

Such occasions as these were good for Camille.
We can be sure that he enjoyed them, in spite of his
disappointed hopes and his embittered poverty-
stricken life. Until the day of his death Camille
remained a very boy, mercifully interested and
pleased by small and homely things.

And it was gradually, during these days and after-
wards during mornings spent with Madame Duplessis
and her daughters in the gardens of the Luxembourg,
that Camille's feelings towards little Lucile almost
imperceptibly changed. At first it had only been an
elder-brotherly liking for a child ten years his junior.
There is a great gulf between a young man of twenty-
two and a child of twelve.

But the child was growing into a charming girl, and
Camille's love increased and altered with her growth,
hopeless and more than hopeless as his affection
appeared at this time.

Doubtless he had other friends, although we do not
know who they were. Maximilian Robespierre was at
Arras, building up a career for himself in his native
town, where he did not, like Camille, suffer from the
consciousness of being misunderstood by his fellow-
townsfolk. The people of Arras were proud of
Robespierre ; later they were to give him his great
opportunity by sending him to Paris as their deputy
to the States-General.

There was another man, like himself an advocate
in Paris, whom Camille certainly knew, although at
this time it does not appear that they were in any way
intimate friends. This was Georges-Jacques Danton,
whose life was in later years to be so closely bound

THE NORTH WIND 39

up with that of his younger colleague. Danton was
already a prosperous lawyer, in a very different
position from Camille. It is not until many years later
that the young man mentions him in a letter to his
father, dated April, 1792, as " a college comrade, who
is in the opposite party to myself and who esteems me
sufficiently not to extend to my person the hatred
which he holds for my opinions."

If one were to judge Camille only by the writings
of his enemies, it would be necessary to believe that
in his private life he was a monster of depravity ;
this, however, may be emphatically denied.

On the other hand, some of his friends, flying to
the other extreme, would have us to understand that he
was a paragon of virtue ; this assertion also cannot be
accepted as a fact.

The real truth would seem to be that Camille was
morally neither much better nor much worse than
most of the young men of his age and class — until
he became engaged to Lucile Duplessis.

After his marriage it is impossible to prove, it is
equally impossible to believe, that he was ever, in word
or act, unfaithful to his wife. To quote from one of
his own writings : " My marriage is so blissful, my
domestic happiness is so great that I feared I was
receiving my reward on earth and I lost my faith in
immortality."

A man who could write these words as Camille did,
honestly and without affectation, can have had no
temptation to seek for happiness elsewhere.

Before his marriage, before he had won for his own
the girl whom he had so long and truly loved, there
was a side of Camille's life which he made little or no
attempt to conceal. A man who wrote that he longed
for a religion " gay, the friend of delights, of women,
of the population and of liberty ; a religion where
the dance, the spectacles and the festivals are a part
of the cult, as was that of the Greeks and Romans," —

40 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

such a man was not likely to be an ascetic in his own
private life.

It can never be sufficiently recognised that in
judging the men of this time it is necessary to bear in
mind that the standard of morality was very low in
France, even lower than in the England of that day.
A young man living alone in Paris, especially a young
man with such a temperament as Camille's, who led
even what we should think a fairly decent life, was a
being rather out of the common.

Under these circumstances, to labour to find
excuses is a profitless employment. A nature like
Camille's was not likely to set up a stricter rule of
conduct than his compeers, and if one were to en-
deavour to prove that he did so, at the expense of
truth, the portrait of the man thus presented would
be absolutely valueless.

Nevertheless, in spite of poverty and of unremunera-
tive and uncongenial drudgery, in spite of endless
disappointments and apparently fruitless hopes, these
years of Camille's life were not wasted.

He was passing through a period of apprenticeship,
as it were, a time of probation before entering on his
real career of journalism.

It is certain that he must have written much during
these years. There is nothing amateurish in the
literary style of the " France Libre," his first important
printed work. Not only constant practice in writing,
but deep and thorough reading went to the making of
that really extraordinary pamphlet.

Probably, together with a large amount of jnore or
less creditable prose, Camille wrote also a vast quantity
of more or less bad verses. Most of these poems have
dissolved into well-deserved obscurity, but some
few have been preserved. M. Claretie, in an appendix
to his biography, gives as a specimen some couplets
written in honour of a young English lady. One
verse will probably convince most people that Camille's

THE NORTH WIND 41

claims to the title of poet were not well-founded.
" To Miss L . . ., a young English Lady."

" Pardon, si, sur les traces,
On me voit chaque soir ;
Mais pour suivre les graces
Est-il besoin d'espoir ?
Sans pouvoir m'en defendre
Mes jours vont s'ecouler,
Le matin a I'attendre,
Le soir a I'admirer."

At this time, as we have said, although Camille's
love for Lucile Duplessis grew with each meeting, his
suit appeared too hopeless to be even hinted at to the
girl's parents. M. Duplessis would simply have
laughed at him ; Madame Duplessis might have been
kinder, but she most certainly would not have con-
sented to think of the young man as her daughter's
lover, desperately poor and desperately unsuccessful
as he still was.

For M. Duplessis, although only the son of a village
blacksmith, had risen to the creditable position of
First Clerk in the Office of the General Control of
Finance. It was not likely that such a prosperous and
well-considered citizen would seriously consider poor
Camille's claims.

As to Lucile's own feelings, it is somewhat hard to
fathom them ; indeed, at this time she did not know
her own heart. She was scarcely more than a child,
and, like many young girls, inclined to be morbid.
Nevertheless, she was no fool. She had opinions and
views of her own. Some of her notebooks and diaries
have been preserved, and they show that she was
widely read for those days and also accustomed to
think for herself.

Sitting up in bed, whilst her family slept, Lucile
scribbled down, half furtively, her thoughts and dreams
in these little exercise books. To be sure, her ideas

42 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

are mainly those of her idol, Rousseau, but there is a
strain of originality as well. It is when she is most
coloured by her master that one likes her least.

In common with other girls, before and since, she
thinks that she will never marry, she doubts her
capacity for love. She is a stone, she says, cold as ice, —
at the advanced age of sixteen ! She imagines that she
hates men, that she is a being set apart.

It is not until 1789 that we begin to see the dawn of a
new feeling, and even then it is only an idea which
she loves. It is impossible to say when the idea
materialised into the shape of shabby, fascinating
Camille Desmoulins.

Nevertheless, Lucile is learning that she does not
hate one particular man. Later, she will know that
she loves him well enough to live for him — well enough
to die for him.

It is a quaint, pathetic little manuscript, that early
diary of Lucile's ; a manuscript to bring a smile to
the lips and tears to the eyes.

So the pretty, wilful girl passed her days and nights
in dreams and self-analysis, while the real romance of
her life was waiting for her, close at hand, in the
person of the impecunious young lawyer, who lived
in such poor apartments in the Hotel Pologne.

Camille cordially hated his dwelling-place, but it had
at least this one great advantage ; it was quite near
to the house of M. Duplessis. From his garret window
the young man could catch an occasional glimpse of the
girl he loved, the girl who at that time must have
seemed to him almost as inaccessible, as far as he was
concerned, as one of those angels to which then and
afterwards he so often compared her.

At this period of his life, when he was dejected and
shabby, people, no doubt, passed Camille by as an
ugly, uninteresting young man. The impression
which he made upon outsiders was always immensely
dependent upon his mood at the moment, but, apart

THE NORTH WIND 43

from this, he was probably now in appearance very-
much as he is described a few years later.

The portraits of Camille are contradictory ; they
differ so much from one another that we may obtain
the impression either of an extremely ugly, or of a
decidedly handsome man. Neither is written testi-
mony much more in agreement.

He remarked himself in a letter to Arthur Dillon :
" I am not a handsome fellow, it must be allowed,"
and, if the essayist Sainte-Beuve's father is to be
believed : " Desmoulins had a disagreeable exterior."

One who was decidedly inimical to Camille, the
writer of the " Souvenirs de la Terreur," says : —

" He had a bilious complexion like Robespierre's, a hard and
sinister eye, more like that of an osprey than that of an eagle.
I saw him often, and he never seemed to me to be better-
looking than at first. I know that there were some who tried
to make him out a handsome fellow, but either they were
flatterers, or they had never seen him."

Not a pleasing portrait this, — but it comes from an
enemy.

It would appear that Camille, while possessing little
beauty of feature, could yet, on occasion, seem
exceedingly attractive. Possibly the truest idea
to which we can attain may be obtained from the few
words which are to be found in an anonymous
pamphlet, relating to the Sainte-Amaranthe family.
The author was a woman, Madame A. R., and she
says : " He was ugly, but with that intellectual
ugliness which pleases. ... It was a humorous and
pleasing ugliness."

This description certainly agrees far the best
with that most attractive of Camille's portraits,
painted by Rouillard, which is now to be seen at
Versailles. These few words bring him before us
irresistibly ; they harmonise with what we learn of
him from his writings and letters ; it might almost be

44 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

said that they sum up the man himself in a deeper
and wider sense than that of mere outward appear-
ance.

To pass from general impressions to details, Camille
was very dark and sallow in complexion. His hair was
black, and, although in his extreme youth he wore
it dressed and powdered, in later years he suffered it,
in accordance with the Republican fashion, to grow
long and to fall over his shoulders, loose and un-
powdered. His eyes were always his best and most
striking feature ; they were very dark, and extra-
ordinarily bright and expressive. His mouth was
large and mobile, and his forehead noticeably fine.
For the rest, he was slightly built and not tall, but
active and singularly boyish in his movements and
bearing.

Such was Camille when his long period of probation
was drawing near to its close. Those days of prepara-
tion, of weary, unremunerative toil, were at last to
bear fruit.

France and the whole world was on the verge of an
upheaval, in which Camille's fortune and Camille's
life were but as drops in the ocean. Yet that huge
cataclysm was to give the obscure young man his
opportunity, to throw him to the surface of events
as it were. In a day, in an hour, in a moment, Camille
Desmoulins was to be transformed from a struggling,
unknown lawyer into the idol of Paris. The mere
nobody, who was not considered worthy either of
praise or blame, was to become someone with immense
opportunities for good or evil, using those oppor-
tunities both for good and evil. The transformation
was sudden and dramatic ; there have been few such
scenes in the whole course of history.

This is not the place to reconsider at length, for the
thousandth time, what causes, gradual or immediate,
led to the French Revolution. The smouldering
discontent, the class hatred, the sense of injustice

THE NORTH WIND 45

which had been growing beneath the surface of
things for centuries had at last reached a point when
it could be suppressed no longer. Many causes had
contributed to bring matters to a climax, many
influences, both open and secret, had been at work
during the preceding generation.

The part which Voltaire, Rousseau and the En-
cyclopaedists played in the inception of the Revolution
has always been recognised, but the development of
their principles was almost necessarily confined to the
intellectual classes. Therefore it is essential to look
deeper if we would hope to find by what power the
masses of the proletariat were stirred in France.

A recent writer. Miss Una Birch, in her most
instructive essay on " Secret Societies and the French
Revolution," gives a lucid and reasonable explanation
of this otherwise almost inexplicable phenomenon.
She traces the undoubted disaffection of the lowest
classes in the kingdom to the effects of the propaganda
work of the Masonic societies and especially of that
great and mysterious association which is generally
known as the " Order of the Perfectibilists " and of
which the Illuminate, Weishaupt, was the moving
spirit.

The aim of this society was, literally speaking, the
establishment of Rousseau's Utopian theories in a
practical form, and its accredited agents worked
exclusively through the existing Masonic lodges in
France, which in time were all infected with the
Perfectibilist doctrines.

One of the most famous Parisian lodges was that
of the " Neuf Soeurs," to which Camille Desmoulins
was associated. The decoration which he wore at the
Masonic ceremonies is still preserved, a little triangular
badge which bears the image of a pelican tearing its
breast. Many of Camille's brother Masons in this
lodge afterwards took prominent parts in the Revolu-
tion ; one need only mention such names as those of

46 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Brissot, La Rochefoucauld, Fauchet, Romme, Danton
and Petion.

It seems certain that an enormous amount of
preparatory work was done underground, as it were,
by the Masonic societies during the years which
immediately preceded the Revolution. In this work
it is only fair to presume that Camille played his part,
although what exactly that part was we have no means
of knowing.

From their very nature the Secret Societies acted in
secret, but their influence in shaping events has
certainly not been duly estimated by historians. We
have no space here to consider the subject further,
but fuller information may be found in Miss Birch's
most interesting book.

For the French Revolution was no mere inconse-
quent outbreak, inevitable and foreordained as an
upheaval of nature. It was a carefully engineered
movement, at least so far as its initial stages were
concerned, although later the torrent broke its bounds
and overwhelmed those who had at first directed its
fury.

The time was coming when the strength of the strong-
est went for nothing in the conflict with the mighty
powers let loose in France. One by one, men were to
arise and, in their turn, strive to govern the storm —
Mirabeau, Danton and Robespierre, with a mighty
host who bore lesser names. One by one they were to
sink, powerless and vanquished, overwhelmed by that
monster which they themselves had helped to arouse.

It was small wonder that, where these men failed,
Camille could not hope to hold his own for long.
He was like a feather blown here and there by the
varying breeze — no, his own comparison is the
truer. He was the weathercock, which showed the
way of the wind.

Ill

IT was in January of the year 1789 that Louis
XVI, King of France and Navarre, yielded to
the importunities of his people and convoked
the States-General, that States-General which,
eighteen years before, the " Dictionnaire Universelle
de la France " had pronounced obsolete.

The great and unbounded joy with which the down-
trodden peasantry of the kingdom heard the news of
this convocation was, paradoxically enough, one of
the causes of the excesses which followed. The people
hoped too much ; they hoped for more than any
power on earth could give them, above all the well-
meaning, ineffective man who was their king.

This being so, their disappointment was the keener
when the bright hope faded, when reforms seemed as
far away as ever, when, where they had looked for
peace, they were met with the sword.

But all this was as yet hidden in the future. In the
meantime the spring of this year, afterwards to be
known as the first year of Liberty, saw the first assem-
blies called together in Paris and the provinces for
the election of deputies.

The mass of the people heard, with almost incredu-
lous joy, that, at last, they would be able to voice their
wrongs, that, at last, the King, their true father, as
they still called him, was to hear and consider their
complaints. And so, in every corner of France, the
" cahiers " or statements were drawn up, those
pathetic documents, written as it were with the very
life-blood of the people, yet with hope vivifying them

47

48 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

all, the sure and certain hope that the King had only
to hear in order to understand, to understand and to
make all things new.

They are unspeakably sad reading, these statements
of the sufferings and wrongs of a nation, often ill-
written and ill-spelt, and plainly drawn up by unedu-
cated, illiterate men.

For it was not only in theory that the lowest classes
of the French people nominated and instructed their
deputies. The States-General of 1789 was elected
on a system of practically universal suffrage, even
women, in some instances, being amongst the electors.

In common with almost the whole of France,
Camille Desmoulins looked upon this convocation of
the Three Estates of the Kingdom as the beginning of
a new era, the dawn of a better day, to use the phrase-
ology of the time. For the moment, all his private
cares were laid aside, and, eager and alert, he waited
for the work of regeneration to begin.

Not that he was altogether content to stand aside

, and watch others effect this great work. Camille,

in his youthful ardour, felt capable of representing

the people of his province in the Assembly most

worthily — if they would only elect him.

Unfortunately, his townsfolk thought otherwise ;
perhaps their opinion is not altogether surprising.
Notwithstanding all his fine ambitions, the young man
had made no mark in Paris, and the Guisards could
scarcely be expected to have much faith in his capa-
bilities.

It was now that Camille was to regret bitterly that
he had not practised his profession permanently in
his native town, like his school comrade Maximilian.
Had he been content to remain peacefully at Guise,
he might by now have been someone of importance,
and worthy of consideration.

For Robespierre, his boyish contemporary, very
little his senior, was chosen as one of the representa-

THE NORTH WIND 49

tives for Arras, his birthplace, where he had earned
quite a reputation for integrity, justice and rectitude
— a reputation which, in the future, he was to remake
for himself in Paris.

Camille did not fail in his ambitions for want of
trying- He hastened back to Guise before the first
electoral meetings took place, and it is evident that
he canvassed for himself most diligently. He managed
to secure the support of three hundred electors of
Vermandois, and he Vv^as one of those sent from Guise
to Laon as a deputy to the preliminary assemblies.
He advanced no further than this ; indeed, he can
scarcely have expected to be himself elected to the
States-General.

It was otherwise where his father was concerned.
M. Desmoulins, senior, might have been sent to Paris
as one of the representatives of his province if he had
chosen to say the word. He was a man of importance
in the district, and was, moreover, universally liked
and respected. M. Desmoulins, however, was not an
ambitious man ; his son, indeed, considered him
culpably lacking in enterprise and initiative. He was
also disinclined to accept the position on the score of
ill-health, and, for one reason and another, much to
Camille's chagrin and disappointment, he was not
amongst the deputies who were finally elected. The
young man could only console himself with the
reflection that the representative nominated by Guise
was his cousin and former benefactor, de Viefville des
Essarts.

At the end of 1788 or the beginning of 1789, before
the elections had really commenced, it would appear
that Camille had produced his first pamphlet. The
" Moniteur," in giving a list of publications which
appeared at this time, mentions " La Philosophic au
Peuple Frangais " par M. Desmoulins. As far as is
known, there is not a copy of this essay extant, but
the writer in the " Moniteur " states that the author

50 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

develops the principles of a plan for a Constitution.
It would seem that the pamphlet was only an earlier
form of " La France Libre."

The work does not, in any case, appear to have
attracted particular attention. Camille's name was
unknown and carried no authority, and, moreover, an
overwhelming mass of political writings of more or
less interest was published at this time. This was
principally on account of a decree issued on July 5 th,

1788, in which the King invited information and
memorials on the " present decree " to be sent by
" all the learned and instructed persons of his
Kingdom."

At about the same time Camille also wrote an ode
upon the " Opening of the States-General," but
neither does this appear to have brought him
any special fame. It is exceedingly bad poetry,
although its sentiments are irreproachable. The
chief interest of the effusion lies in the fact that
it is distinctly monarchial in tone. King Louis is
compared to the greatest emperors of Rome, and
called upon, in high-flown language, to regenerate
his country.

After manifold delays and postponements the
elections were finally completed, and on May 5th,

1789, the States-General was formally opened at
Versailles with great pomp and ceremony.

Many writers have described this day and the
mingled feelings which the proceedings aroused both
in themselves and in the mass of the people. For our
present purpose, since it is Camille's point of view
which we are considering, we cannot do better than
give the account in his own words, used in writing to
his father.

It is now that the young man's letters become really
valuable. They describe briefly all that happened at
Paris and Versailles within Camille's ken, in a style
which is, in its way, quite inimitable.

THE NORTH WIND 51

Camille had apparently returned to the capital
especially to see this ceremony, and he writes to his
father enthusiastically on the following day : —

" Yesterday was one of the brightest days of my life. One
must needs have been a very bad citizen not to take part in the
festivity of that sacred day. I believe that if I had only come
from Guise to Paris to see this procession of the three orders
and the opening of our States-General, I should not regret this
pilgrimage. I only had one cause for discontent, and that lay
in not seeing you amongst our deputies. One of my comrades
has been more fortunate than I, this is Robespierre, deputy for
Arras. He had the sense to plead in his own province. . . .
One noticed yesterday the duke d'Orleans in his rank as deputy
to the bailliage of Crespy, and Count Mirabeau with the dress
of the Third Estate and a sword. . . . The costume of the
nobility, exactly the same as that of the dukes and peers, was
magnificent. . . . How proudly our deputies carried them-
selves ! they had cafut intra nubes. . . . The abbe de Bour-
ville, one of my friends, took me to dine with his uncle,
Chevalier M , . ., Major-General. It was there that I noticed
how the bulk of the nobility were irritated against M. Necker.

" They cried by thousands and thousands : ' Long live the
King ! Long live the Third Estate ! ' There were some cheers
for the duke d'Orleans, none for the cloth of gold, nor for the
cassocks. The face of the King was alight with joy. It is four
years since he heard the cry : ' Long live the King ! ' . . .

" I wrote yesterday to Mirabeau to try, if possible, to be put
on the staff of the famous gazette which will describe all that
takes place at the States-General. Thousands are subscribing
to it here, and it will bring the author 100,000 crowns, they
say. Shall I subscribe for you ? "

It is easy to imagine Camille, dressed in all his
best, hastening along the road to Versailles on that
brilliant spring morning.

The royal town was ablaze with flags and decora-
tions glittering in the May sunlight. It seemed a day
of festival for rich and poor alike.

We can picture the young man, his vivid, ugly face
alight with enthusiasm, standing wedged amidst the

52 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

close-packed crowd, cheering the sombrely dressed
deputies of the Third Estate as they passed, cheering
the King, too, heartily enough, and the King's cousin,
the future " Equality " Orleans, but silent when the
Queen passed, beautiful and proud as ever, unhappy
both for public and private reasons, yet hiding her
sorrow under a mask of cold indifference.

In the letters which Camille wrote to his father
during the month of June it is easy to see what a change
had come over the young man's life. The days of
weary waiting and preparation were over, all was
stir and excitement around him ; Paris was in a state
of effervescence, and in such an atmosphere Camille
was in his element.

True, Chateaubriand describes him at this time as
" sallow, shabby and needy," and we know for a
certainty that he was as much in need of money as
ever, but he was beginning to feel within himself
a measure of power.

He was even conscious, rightly or wrongly, of being
considered by others to be a person of importance.
He writes on June 3rd : —

" I received your letter upon my return from Versailles ;
where I went to see our dear deputies. ... I dined there with
our deputies from Dauphiny and Brittany ; they all know me
as a patriot, and they all pay me attentions which flatter me."

In the same letter he describes very vividly his
manner of life at that time : —

" I am at present occupied with a patriotic work. The
pleasure that I experience in hearing the admirable plans of
our zealous citizens at the club and in certain cafes leads me
there.

" I left this letter upon my desk, A week has passed.
To-morrow, Sunday, I return to Versailles. I go to inflame
others and to be myself inflamed. We are about to enter
upon a great week. That which has passed at Versailles ought
to give marvellous courage to our deputies. . . . The States-
General has attracted to Paris a crowd of strangers and of

THE NORTH WIND 53

French from all the provinces. The city is full, Versailles the
same. . . . You have no idea of the joy which our regeneration
gives me. Liberty must be a beautiful thing, since Cato tore
out his entrails sooner than have a master."

In a very few words Camille gives us here an extra-
ordinarily clear impression of the state of Paris during
those fervent midsummer days.

We have only one description to match it, and that
is to be found in the Journal of our own English
traveller, Arthur Young. The impressions of this
writer may well find a place here ; they supplement
and accentuate, as it were, those of Camille. There
were odd points of likeness in the characters of these
two men, opposite as they were in many respects.

" Paris," writes Young, " is at present in such a ferment
about the States-General, now holding at Versailles, that
conversation is absolutely absorbed by them. Not a word of
anything else talked of. . . . The business going forward at
present in the pamphlet shops of Paris is incredible. . . .
Every hour produces something new. Thirteen came out
to-day, sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week. . . .
At Desein's and some other shops here one can scarcely squeeze
from the door to the counter. . . . Nineteen-twentieths of
these products are in favour of liberty. ... It is easy to
conceive the spirit that must thus be raised among the people.
But the coffee-houses in the Palais Royal present yet more
singular and astonishing spectacles ; they are not only crowded
within, but other expectant crowds are at the doors and
windows, listening a gorge defloye to certain orators who from
chairs or tables harangue each his little audience ; the eagerness
with which they are heard and the thunder of applause they
receive for every sentiment of more than common hardiness
or violence against the present government cannot easily be
imagined."

Probably by this time Camille had ceased to make
any pretence of practising his profession. He was
occupied, as he told his father, in writing his first
great literary work " La France Libre."

It is only fair to Camille and his principles to say

54 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

that he wished to publish this pamphlet then and
there. It was not by his will that the production was
postponed until the dawn of that day of July 14th,
which changed the whole current of public opinion in
France, by proving that the populace had might as
well as right upon their side.

However, the printer Momoro was cautious. This
man, who was afterwards to proclaim himself the
most ardent of democrats, the " first printer of the
National Liberty," declined for the moment to bring
out such an incendiary piece of work as this of
Camille's. He preferred to wait events — and it was
not long before events developed themselves.

This refusal of Momoro to print his work exasperated
Camille beyond measure. He writes to his father after
June 20th : —

" I have had a tremendous disagreement with my printer
and pubhsher; if I had the cash I would buy a press, the
monopoly of these rascals revolts me so much. It rains pam-
phlets, each more brilliant than the last."

Meanwhile things did not advance so rapidly at
Versailles as had been hoped. Step by step the
members of the Third Estate fought for their rights,
hampered and obstructed by the deputies of the
two aristocratic orders, who obstinately opposed the
smallest measures of reform.

It is not perfectly certain that Camille was at
Versailles on that famous 20th of June, when the
Deputies of the people were expelled from the hall
of the Assembly on the feeble pretext that it was
necessary to prepare it for the Royal seance. All the
world knows how, in the pouring rain, they repaired
to the dilapidated open tennis court, still to be seen
in the Rue St. Frangois at Versailles, where, with
only one exception, they unanimously took the solemn
oath never to dissolve until France was given a Con-
stitution.

THE NORTH WIND 55

Although Camille does not, in his letters, definitely
mention the episode of the Tennis Court oath, it is
very possible that he was present amidst the curious
crowd, who watched the proceedings from the covered
galleries round the building. In any case he is full of
enthusiasm at the firm stand taken by the popular
deputies, and he says positively that he was at Versailles
on Monday and Tuesday, June 22nd and 23rd.

It would certainly appear from what he writes in a
letter to his father on June 24th that he was present
at the Royal sitting on the latter date. He gives a
brief and pointed account of that historical scene : —

" The sitting lasted thirty-five minutes. The King annulled
all that the Third Estate had done, threw an apple of discord
amongst the three orders, proposed fifty-three articles of a
crafty edict, where he feigned to accord part of what the
cahiers demanded ; he finished by saying ' No remonstrances '
and concluded the sitting. The nobles applauded, a great part
of the clergy did the same. The most mournful silence in the
Third Estate. The two orders departed, with the exception of
thirty or forty deputies, who remained with the Third. It was
eleven o'clock. The Third Estate remained assembled until
three. They protested, confirmed the deliberations of the
17th and annulled all which had been done.

" M. de Breze came to order them to separate. 'The
King,' said Mirabeau, ' can cause us to be killed ; tell him that
we all wait death ; but that he need not hope that we shall
separate until we have made the Constitution.'

" M. de Breze came a second time ; the same response and
they continued their deliberations. They declared by a second
decree their persons to be sacred and inviolable, by a third
decree they declared that they could not obey the will of the
Prince, and ordained that the door of the Assembly should
always be open to the nation.

" In a word, all have shown a Roman firmness, and are re-
solved to seal our liberties with their blood. All Paris is aflame ;
the Palais Royal is as full as an egg ; they applaud the duke
d'Orleans with transport. The King passes ; everyone is
silent : M. Bailly, President of the Assembly, appears, all clap
their hands ; they cry : ' Long live the Nation ! ' "

56 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

It will be noticed that Mirabeau's famous answer
to the order of the King conveyed to the Assembly
by de Breze is, as given by Camille, at the same time
briefer and more dignified than in the more generally
accepted version. Moreover, he does not put into
Mirabeau's mouth the well-known phrase, " We will
not be expelled save at the point of the bayonet," a
phrase which many modern historians are inclined to
consider more or less mythical.

In any case Camille's impromptu description of this
event shows many of the qualities of a good journalist.
The facts are all there, presented dramatically enough
and without a superfluous word, and at the end of this
brief passage the state of public opinion in Paris is
presented to us very impressively.

The hostility of the Court party against the re-
bellious Third Estate grew from the day of the Royal
sitting onwards. The King temporised, yielding as
usual first on one side, then on the other, but his wife
and ministers were always with him, and naturally
they and their followers obtained the greatest con-
cessions.

Louis was induced, by the advice of the Queen and
his brothers, to send for a large number of mercenary
troops, and these German and Swiss soldiers were
stationed in several camps near Versailles and in the
Champ-de-Mars. These regiments were intended to
intimidate Paris and the popular section of the States-^
General, now known as the National Assembly, and
to cast the fear of death upon those who dared to
resist the royal authority. As a matter of fact the
chief effect produced by the presence of the troops
was to irritate the citizens of Paris still further and to
suggest to them the possibility of an armed resistance
since arms were to be employed against them.

The temper of the city was becoming dangerous;
it required very little to stir the people to fury. It is a
foretaste of the horrors which were to follow which

THE NORTH WIND 57

Camille gives us in describing the slaughter of a pohce
spy in the Palais Royal at the beginning of July. He
tells us that the unfortunate wretch was stripped,
thrown into the basin of one of the fountains in the
garden, and forced under the water. He was stoned
and beaten with canes, and one of his eyes was knocked
out of its socket. Camille concludes by saying that :
" His punishment lasted from midday until half-past
five, and he had quite ten thousand executioners."

Camille, it must be noticed, has no word of pity for
this unfortunate servant of a cruel system. He speaks
of him only as a " vile rascal." It would almost seem
as though he were infected with the madness of the
crowd, and considered such rough justice allowable if
not commendable. It is the first sign in his writings
of that dangerous theory that the mob can do no
wrong, that, as he wrote afterwards in his journal :
" This much calumniated people is moved by prin-
ciples of equity ; it has wholesome notions in this
respect and nothing angers it so much as injustice."

Camille was to learn for himself, five years later,
how little one can trust to the justice and equity of
the mob.

In his letters written at the beginning of July
Camille speaks much of the " thirty thousand men
around Paris " and of the " three or four little camps
garnished with artillery," but he tells his father also
that many of the soldiers, including numbers of the
French guards themselves, are deserting from their
regiments and have come to espouse the cause of the
people in that " camp of patriots," the Palais Royal.

It is with more triumph than apprehension that he
writes these words at the beginning of one of his
letters : " The conflagration increases : Jam proximus
ardet Ucalegonj'^

IV

THE morning of the 12th of July, 1789,
dawned bright and sunny, that day which
was to be the most momentous in all the
life of Camille Desmoulins.

He can have had no idea when he awoke of
what this summer Sunday was to bring forth, of
that extraordinary event which was to transform him
with dramatic suddenness from a briefless lawyer to a
personage of the first importance in Paris and in
France.

It is not clear whether at this time Camille was
staying at Versailles, or whether, as is more probable,
he only hastened there from Paris in the morning, to
learn at first hand what had passed in the Assembly
and at the Chateau. It was, in any case, at Versailles
that he heard the news which fell like a thunderbolt
upon him and upon all the members of the popular
party. Necker, the people's minister, the idol of the
moment in Paris, had been dismissed from ofiice, and
was even then hurrying to his Swiss exile.

The personality of Necker had an extraordinary
hold upon the populace at this time. In spite of very
various opinions of the character of the Swiss financier,
there can be no doubt that he possessed this power
of imposing his own self-belief upon others. The
Parisians were soon to discover that this saint of theirs
was only whitewashed plaster ; in the meantime, his
very name could stir them to enthusiasm or fury,

Camille must have returned hastily to Paris on hear-
ing the news of Necker's dismissal. It is hard to say

58

THE NORTH WIND 59

whether there was any definite plan in his mind of
inciting the populace to rebellion. Probably his first
idea was to make his way to the Palais Royal and
there to tell the assembled crowd his tragic tidings.
A dramatic situation of this kind had always the
strongest appeal for Camille ; he had the child's love
for imparting news, good or bad.

A dense throng filled the gardens of the Palais Royal.
At the least computation there were six thousand
persons present, of all ages and classes, all irritated and
excited by the presence of the foreign troops round the
capital, all knowing little or nothing, and therefore
ready to believe anything.

The streets had been placarded overnight with
enormous posters, inviting peaceable citizens to remain
within doors, to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd.
But if these placards were intended to reassure, which
is doubtful, we may be certain that the very fact of
their appearance in the city would have exactly the
opposite effect.

It was into this crowd that Camille made his way,
flushed and heated. The young man was almost beside
himself with anger and excitement, and no doubt
these feelings were plainly visible in his face.

One can imagine those of his friends and acquaint-
ances who were present crowding around him to hear
the latest news from Versailles, one can almost hear
Camille's stammering answers, nearly incoherent prob-
ably, as he strove for words in his nervous excite-
ment. More and more people pressed towards him,
trying to catch his news, realising that there was some-
thing seriously amiss.

It was now, it would appear from his own words,
that the definite intention came to Camille to stir
up the crowd to rebellion.

He himself gave in his writings two descriptions of
this, the great day of his life. The first is to be found
in a letter to his father dated July 1 6th, the second is

6o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

contained in the fifth number of the " Vieux Cor-
deKer," where Camille described the scene once
more in detail to remind the fickle mob of this, his
greatest service to Liberty and to France.

These two versions agree in the main, although the
later account is the more detailed, and the words and
phrases have evidently been carefully thought out and
polished. Probably one is not far wrong in thinking
that these expressions represent what Camille after-
wards thought that he ought to have said rather than
the actual words which he used. His call to arms
appears here less an impulse of the moment than a
carefully premeditated action.

But the first description was written whilst the
episode and the events which arose from it still
absorbed Camille, body and soul. The very inco-
herence of its diction stamps it as a true relation of
what took place.

" My very dear father," Camille begins his letter. " Now at
last one can write to you, the letter will arrive. Myself, I have
posted a sentinel to-day in the post-office, and there is no more
a secret cabinet where the letters are unsealed. How the face
of things is changed since three days ago ! On Sunday all Paris
was dismayed at the dismissal of M. Necker ; I had tried to
stir up the people, yet nobody took arms. I mixed with the
crowd ; they saw my zeal ; they surrounded me ; they pressed
me to mount upon a table ; in a moment I am surrounded by
six thousand persons.

" ' Citizens ! ' I said then. ' You know that the nation has
demanded that Necker should retain office, that a monument
should be raised to him ; he has been dismissed ! Could they
defy you more insolently ? After this, they will dare any-
thing, and for this night they meditate, they prepare perhaps,
a St. Bartholomew for the patriots.'

" I was stifled by the rush of thoughts which flowed into my
mind. I spoke without ordering my words.

" ' To arms ! ' I cried. ' To arms ! Take, all of you, green
cockades, the colour of hope ! '

" I recollect that I finished with these words : ' The

THE NORTH WIND 6i

infamous police are here. Ah, well, let them watch me, let
them observe me carefully. Yes, it is I who call my brothers to
liberty ! ' And, lifting a pistol, ' At least, they shall not take
me alive, and I shall know how to die gloriously. Only one
misfortune can touch me, it is that of seeing France become
enslaved.'

" Then I descended ; they embraced me, they stifled me
with caresses.

" ' My friend,' said several, ' we are going to make a guard
for you ; we will not abandon you, we will go where you
wish.'

" I said that I did not wish to have the command, and that
I would only be a soldier of the fatherland. I took a green
ribbon and fastened it the first to my hat. With what rapidity
the conflagration spread ! "

Camille's review of the circumstances, written
nearly five years later, somehow lacks the life of the
former version. Yet it is not without a particular
interest of its own.

" It was half-past two," he writes. " I came to sound the
people. My anger against the despots was turned to despair.
I saw that the groups, although keenly moved and dismayed,
were not ripe for an upheaval. Three young men appeared to
me to be animated by more vehement courage ; they held
each other by the hand. I saw that they had come to the Palais
Royal with the same design as myself; some passive citizens
followed them.

" ' Sirs,' I said to them, ' here is the beginning of a civic
enlistment ; it is necessary for one of us to devote himself, and,
mounted upon a table, to harangue the people.'

" ' Mount, then ! '

" I consented, I was rather lifted upon the table than
mounted there. Scarcely was I raised than I saw myself sur-
rounded by an immense crowd. Here is my short harangue,
which I shall never forget.

" ' Citizens, there is not a moment to be lost. I come from
Versailles. M. Necker is dismissed. This recalls the tocsin of
a St, Bartholomew to patriots ; this evening all the German
and Swiss battalions will come from the Champ-de-Mars to
assassinate us. There only remains to us one resource ; it is to

62 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

take up arms and to adopt cockades by which we may know
each other.'

" I had tears in my eyes, and I spoke with a vigour that I
could never again either recall or paint. My motion was
received with infinite applause ; I continued.

" ' What colours will you have ? ' Someone cried :
' Choose.'

" ' Will you have green, the colour of hope, or the blue of
Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of demo-
cracy .? '

" Voices were raised : 'Green! The colour of hope ! '

" Then I cried : ' Friends, the signal is given. Here are the
spies and satellites of the police who watch us. I will not fall
living into their hands.' Then, drawing two pistols from my
pocket, I said : ' Let all citizens imitate me ! ' "

It was in this fashion that Camille Desmoulins
made the one great speech of his life, and, by a strange
paradox, he, whose elocutionary powers were ever of
the weakest, leapt into fame by means of ^oratory. But
indeed it must be confessed that his outburst owed
its success mainly to the fact that it was wonderfully
well-timed. It came precisely at the right moment.

Thus Camille is the central figure of one of the
most vivid and memorable scenes in the Revolution.
We can picture him, reared above the madly excited
crowd on his rickety platform, composed of a chair
mounted on a table and supported by one Citizen
Beaubourg.

For that instant, stammering, insignificant Camille
was beside himself — nay, inspired. With face aglow
and black eyes blazing, with his long, dishevelled hair
flung back wildly and his hoarse, weak voice strained
to the utmost to reach to the outskirts of the crowd,
he flung out the words which called a nation to arms.

For it was not only in Camille's own opinion that
this speech made him one of the most prominent men
in Paris. Even those who had never heard his name
spoke of the act and its immediate effect. Here is the
description given by Helen Maria Williams, that

THE NORTH WIND 63

extraordinary and eccentric woman who was in France
at the time.

" I have heard several persons mention a young man of
insignificant figure, who, the day before the Bastille was taken,
got up on a chair in the Palais Royal and harangued the
multitude, conjuring them to make a struggle for their liberty
and asserting that now the moment was arrived. They
listened to his eloquence with the most eager attention and,
when he had instructed as many as could hear him at one time,
he requested them to depart, and repeated his harangue to a
new set of auditors."

This account would seem to imply that Miss
Williams believed the address to have been more or
less premeditated, an opinion which is certainly
supported by Camille's own latest version of the affair.

It is the view also which Heinrich von Sybel takes
in his great and learned history of the French Revolu-
tion.

" Camille Desmoulins," he says, " incited the people to
resistance from the windows [sic] of the Cafe Foy. The popu-
lace had been so well prepared that the effect of his address
was tremendous."

It is interesting to compare the point of view of an
ardent royalist with regard to this event and to
Cam.ille himself. Here is how Bertrand de Moleville
describes it in his " Annals " : —

" The news [of Necker's dismissal] was not confirmed till
between eleven and twelve o'clock by persons coming from
Versailles to the Palais Royal, where the concourse of Patriots
was such that it was hardly possible to take half a dozen steps
in the garden without being stopped by a group. In the middle
of this immense crowd, Camille Desmoulins, one of the most
inflammatory Demoniacs of the Revolution, mounting upon
a table, cried out with a thrilling voice : ' Citizens, Necker is
dismissed.' "

The remainder of the speech de Moleville gives
practically in the same words as Camille.

64 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

There stands a bronze statue in the garden o£ the
Palais Royal, which represents Camille, as the sculptor,
Boverie, imagines him to have appeared upon this,
the greatest day of his life. The figure has a lonely
and deserted air, for the glory of the Palais Royal is
departed. This " Camp of the patriots," as Camille
called it, has become a desert, with here and there a
solitary passer-by to accentuate its emptiness. Only
those who would fain recall the memories of the wild
past seek for them here, as though the shadows of the
dead might still be expected to haunt the stage where
they played their strenuous parts.

In Camille's own day his exploit was commemorated
in a more humble fashion. Last summer at an old
pottery very far from Paris, in the mountains of the
Bernese Oberland, we discovered an earthenware
plate, which bears the date 1789. On it, in crude
blues and yellows, the hero of July 12th is represented,
standing on the rickety table, with pistol and hat
upraised. And I do not think that Camille was the
man to despise even such homely fame as this.

Thus Camille's first public act was performed ;
from henceforth, as Jules Claretie says : " In him are
incarnate now, and shall be incarnate for the future —
the Revolution and Hope."

When the young man descended, panting and ex-
hausted, from his improvised tribune, he was seized
with rough friendliness and borne in triumph round
the gardens. The trees were stripped of their leaves
to furnish the green cockades, and the excited crowd
surged out into the streets, echoing Camille's cry :
" To arms ! To arms ! "

They happened to pass the shop of a Swiss image-
maker, one Curtius, in whose window were displayed
the effigies of Necker and of another popular idol,
the duke d'Orleans. The mob broke into the shop
forthwith, seized the busts and raised them as
standards, swathing the image of Necker in a scarf of

THE NORTH WIND 65

crape. A little girl watched the stormy scene in
frightened excitement. She was Curtius' niece,
afterwards to be known all the world over as Madame
Tussaud.

In this manner the procession paraded the streets,
growing in numbers at every by-road and alley
which flowed, as it were, into the main stream.

Camille was doubtless borne in the van, although
he himself does not mention the part which he played ;
however, it is not likely that the Parisians were willing
to relinquish readily this new idol of theirs, the man
who had given them their rallying cry.

For some little time the procession marched through
the streets undisturbed. Possibly if no opposition had
been made to them, they would have dispersed peace-
ably, at any rate for the time. They had, at the
moment, no particular object in view.

But the foreign troops were thickly distributed
throughout and around Paris. The procession was
almost bound to come into collision with them, and
the feeling of hostility against the Swiss and German
mercenaries was very strong amongst the mob. What
happened was only that which might have been
expected.

Several regiments were hastily summoned from the
camp in the Champ-de-Mars and opposed the crowd
as it debouched into the Champs Elysees. The
soldiers of the Royal Allemand retreated before
showers of stones and other missiles, but the mob was
driven back when the cavalry under Prince Lambesc
charged upon the people, literally trampling them
under the feet of the horses.

Although several of the crowd were more or less
seriously wounded, one man only was killed, a soldier
who was assisting to carry the bust of Necker.
But this was enough to rouse the people to madness.
The first blood had been shed in the Revolution.
For an instant the mob was driven back, intimidated.

66 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Lambesc must have congratulated himself upon the
success of his measures. He had not reckoned on a
certain amount of reorganising power which existed
in these apparently undisciplined throngs. Moreover,
a still more important factor had now to be reckoned
with : the defection of the regular troops.

A regiment of the French guards had been known
to be disaffected, and Lambesc had tried to overawe
them by placing them in their barracks under the
supervision of a squadron of loyal dragoons. His
precaution was useless ; when the mutinous regiment
heard that fighting was going forward in the Tuileries
Gardens, they broke through their guard, driving the
cavalry before them, and joined the mob, ranging
themselves between the people and the Royal troops.

The crov/d re-formed, thus supported by the guards,
and presented a solid front when another charge was
attempted.

The troops were driven back, without having suc-
ceeded in dispersing the people, and retired sullenly
into their camps, where they awaited orders which
never came. Versailles, as usual, was unprepared for
an emergency.

The mob had put its strength to the test and it had
been victorious. The undisciplined throng had driven
back the feared and hated troops ; henceforth the
soldiers might be hated, but they would not be feared
in the same measure.

There was little sleep in Paris that night. The
people were terrified at what they had done, when
there was time for consideration. After all, the town
was practically invested by the King's troops ; what
could the Parisians expect but swift and terrible
punishment ?

A spirit of fear and anxiety was abroad. Men might
be seen lying with their ears to the ground, awaiting
the first sound of the cannon.

To add to the general alarm, bands of smugglers

THE NORTH WIND 6^

both from within and without the city seized the
opportunity offered by the unrest and confusion to
burn the Customs' barriers, and the sight of these
conflagrations gave rise to the beHef that the mer-
cenary troops had already begun to assault the
city.

According to Camille's account, people attacked
and plundered the armourers' shops, to provide them-
selves with weapons as early as this Sunday evening.
The cafes were full until a late hour ; a plan was
growing in men's minds, but it must be discussed,
thought out.

Camille, as far as we can gather, was here, there and
everywhere. With General Danican, he seems to
have been looked upon as one of the leaders of the
movement, although, according to his own showing,
he had refused to take the command.

As he wrote himself in later years : " I had at that
time all the daring of the Revolution."

On Monday morning the tocsin sounded from the
belfries of Paris ; the people found themselves with
at least one definite object in view. They must be
armed, by fair means or foul. It is probable that few,
as yet, contemplated more than self-defence, but
with an armed mob it needs only a word to incite
them to go farther and to attack in their turn.

That long summer day was stiflingly hot ; there was
thunder in the air in more senses than one.

And Paris was arming itself. The people neglected
their daily work ; only the smithy shops were busy,
crowded with men who brought weapons to be made
or mended. Scythes and daggers were fixed on to
poles, and the blacksmiths were beating out pikes,
those terrible pikes which were to make -the Paris mob
more formidable than an army of trained soldiers.
Early in the morning a number of men and women
attacked and broke into the Garde Meuble, where
they found a great quantity of ancient and modern

68 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

arms which they promptly distributed amongst
themselves.

Meanwhile, at the Hotel de Ville the Revolution
was in process of organisation. The central committee
of Parisian electors, which had been sitting there
since July 4th, took over the government of the
insurrection.

They proclaimed that a voluntary force of forty-
eight thousand men must immediately be raised for
the defence of the capital, each of the eighty electoral
districts furnishing a battalion eight hundred strong.
This force, in the formation of which the Govern-
ment was in no way consulted, was first called the
Parisian Militia, and it was under the command of
M. de la Salle d'Offremont, the director of the
Arsenal.

Although, of course, at such short notice it was
impossible to think of providing uniforms, a badge
was chosen for this Militia or National Guard, a badge
which was later to become of world-wide fame. The
red and blue of the city and the white of the army
were joined in one cockade to form the famous tri-
colour.

This central committee also busied itself with the
arming of the mob.

It is not easy to say precisely how or by whom the
impulse was given which led the Fauxbourgs St.
Antoine and St. Marceau to first conceive the idea of
taking the Bastille. It is true that in some of the
" cahiers " the destruction of this prison was expressly
demanded ; the desire was evidently a widespread one.

Certainly the plan was not entirely new. In a letter
to his father at the end of June or the beginning of
July, Camille says that at the time when the French
guards first mutinied there was a question of marching
at once upon the Bastille or the fortress of Vincennes,
although the scheme came to nothing for the time
being.

THE NORTH WIND 69

It seems that the thought was dormant in the minds
of many. Repeated vaguely again and again, the germ
of an idea spread from one to another, until it grew
into a definite plan. To the inhabitants of the two
great " slum " fauxbourgs the Bastille was the in-
carnation of tyranny and oppression. The great,
lowering building dominated the district. Legends
were rife amongst the people of hundreds of prisoners
incarcerated there, forgotten by all the world. These
stories were false in the main, as the mob was soon to
prove for itself, but the theory was the same.

Here was the Bastille, a concrete emblem of tyranny.
The people were in arms against tyrants ; let them
overthrow the great dungeon.

There was besides a more practical reason for the
assault. The fortress was connected with a huge
arsenal, containing a vast quantity of arms. It was
weapons and ammunition which the people required ;
therefore when the men of St. Marceau had obtained
them from the Invalides, St. Antoine resolved that
its necessity should be supplied by the Bastille.

The affair was not unpremeditated. Regular plans
for taking the fortress were suggested to the Electoral
Committee at the Hotel de Ville. Some suggested
huge catapults, like those used by the ancients, while
Santerre, the Brewer, brought forward a scheme
which was even more ingenious. He proposed to set
fire to the Bastille by means of oil of turpentine and
phosphorus, forced through the pumps of fire engines.
So feasible did this plan appear to the Committee that
the engines were actually taken to the spot, although
it was not found possible to use them.

Some historians assert that matters were brought
to a climax when a courier was intercepted by the
mob on his way from Versailles to de Launay, governor
of the Bastille, carrying an order which enjoined
that the fortress was to be held to the last extremity.

It is said that this order was carried straightway

70 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

to the Hotel de Ville, and that the Central Committee
at once resolved to attack the Bastille, before the
Governor could receive another despatch to the same
effect.

Although we have no absolute proof of the fact,
there can be little doubt that Camille was busied
during this day in stirring up the people. Very likely
he caught up and propagated everywhere the idea of
taking the Bastille. He had the instincts of the
agitator and the j ournalist in a sufficiently large measure
to make him see the importance of giving the mob an
objective.

Of one thing we may be quite certain ; Camille
was not in the background during that feverish
Monday. Popularity was very sweet to him now and
always ; moreover, it was a new sensation to him to be
someone of consequence, and he was not, at this or
any other time, particularly level-headed.

So the hot, steaming day wore on. Towards evening
there was a heavy thunderstorm which drove the
Parisians to take shelter for a time, but meanwhile
another storm was brewing, which was to break in its
full fury next day.

The following morning dawned dull and cloudy ;
the sun did not shine at the breaking of this day, the
most momentous in all the stormy history of France.
July 14th — the first day of the first year of Liberty,
the day when the earliest blow was struck at the
foundations of the monarchy — all this and more the
mention of that summer morning was to mean in after
years.

The Fauxbourgs of St. Antoine and St. Marceau
were astir at dawn ; men had slept but little that
night. They were ready now for whatever the day
might bring forth.

Early that morning a deputation from the Hotel de
Ville, headed by the Procureur du Roi, had led the
insurgents to the Invalides and forced M. de Sombreuil

THE NORTH WIND 71

to open the gates and allow the mob to provide
themselves with weapons out of his vast store of arms.

Camille was one of those who accompanied the
populace to the Invalides. He tells his father that :
" I descended myself under the dome at the risk of
being stifled. I saw there, as it seemed to me, at least
a hundred thousand muskets. I armed myself with a
brand-new one, provided with a bayonet and with
two pistols."

It was in this way that the mob armed themselves ;
such as were able to do so. The rest must needs wait
for their weapons.

Gradually the crowd gathered, always concentrating
upon one point. Towards ten o'clock in the morning
a huge throng was assembled round the gates of the
Bastille, and de Launay, the Governor, tried to
intimidate them with a volley of musketry. This
fusillade had quite a contrary effect ; it enraged the
insurgents, and the noise attracted a host of others to
join them. From the towers of the Bastille could be
seen the advance of a surging mob from all directions, a
mob which thickened with every moment that passed.

If the fortress had not been absolutely inadequately
garrisoned and provisioned, it would have been
impregnable. The eight huge towers and the walls
ten feet thick might indeed have resisted any human
onslaught. But de Launay had but a hundred and
thirty-eight men to support him, of whom one half
were veteran pensioners. There was no means of
preventing the water supply from being cut off — and,
moreover, he had but two sacks of flour.

The Governor's only hope was in the succour
which he momentarily expected from de Besenval,
who commanded the troops in the Champ-de-Mars.
That succour never came.

And then the extraordinary assault took place,
which is known to history as the taking of the Bastille.
The event has been described again and again, yet

72 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

historians of every shade o£ thought agree in this :
that the thing was an apparent impossibiHty, accom-
phshed in an incredibly short space of time.

The first entrance of the mob into the fortress was
effected by two half-pay soldiers, Louis Tournay and
Aubin Bonnemere, who contrived to climb in by way
of the Governor's house, and to lower the outer
drawbridge. Once within, the men of the fauxbourgs
beat back ail resistance by sheer force of numbers.
The stand made against them was pitifully weak ; the
small garrison fought half-heartedly, and one only of
the great guns was fired on the people.

De Launay was urged, by his own men, to surrender,
but, after waiting for de Besenval's relief as long as he
dared, he resolved to blow up the fortress himself,
rather than yield it to the mob. As he was in the
act of applying a match to the powder-magazine,
some of the garrison interposed, and forced him to
capitulate. He did so after an assurance from Elie
and Hulin, once officers in the French Guards, now
leaders of the mob, that : " on the honour of French
soldiers, no injury shall be done to you."

If the matter had rested with these two, both brave
and honourable men, this promise would have been
faithfully kept, but in spite of all their efforts, the mob
massacred the unfortunate de Launay and de Lorme,
his second in command, as they were being taken to the
Hotel de Ville. During the actual assault ninety-eight
of the besiegers and one only of the besieged were killed.

With regard to Camille's part in this, the first great
" day " of the Revolution, he says, writing to his father
on July 1 6th, that he hastened to the scene at the first
sound of the cannon.

" But the Bastille was already taken in two and a half hours,
a thing which appears miraculous. The Bastille could have
been held six months, if anything could be held against French
impetuosity ; the Bastille was taken by the citizens and by
private soldiers without a chief, without one single officer ! "

THE NORTH WIND 73

We learn, from another source, that Camille was
one of the first to mount the ramparts of the conquered
fortress.

In an incredibly short space of time, all was over.
The Bastille had fallen ; the victorious leaders handed
the great keys of the fortress to the Paris Munici-
pality — and it was now that the invincible, omnipotent
mob sullied their victory. Not only were de Launay
and several of his garrison cruelly murdered, but also
de Flesselles, Provost of the Alerchants, who, men
said, had not whole-heartedly supported the in-
surrection.

A wild night followed that wild day. The people
of Paris were mad with success, yet haunted by the
fear of reprisals. They ransacked the Bastille in the
search for prisoners. Only seven were found, seven
miserable, terrified beings, knowing nothing of what
had passed, conscious only of a hell-like din raging
outside their cells. They were carried in triumph
through the streets of Paris, heroes for this one night,
forgotten next day in the swift rush of events.

And under this date of July 14th, when the French
people took the first step on that road which was to
lead them to victory and their king to the guillotine,
that same King Louis wrote in his diary the one word :
" Nothing."

Camille gave to his father and gives to us a vivid
picture of this night and the following day.

" All the streets were lighted," he says. " They threw out
into the road chairs, tables, casks, piles of everything, carts and
carriages, in order to make barricades and to break the legs of
horses. There were 70,000 men under arms this night. The
French guard patrolled with us. I mounted guard all night
long. . . . ^

"Yesterday morning [the 15 th] the alarmed King went to
the National Assembly ; he threw himself upon the mercy of
the Assembly and all his sins were forgiven. Our deputies
reconducted him in triumph to the Castle. . . . Target tells

74 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

me that It was a fine procession. In the evening the procession
was still more beautiful ; one hundred and fifty deputies of
the National Assembly, clergy, nobility and commons were
mounted in the King's carriages to carry the news of the peace
to Paris.

" They arrived at half-past three at the Place Louis XV,
descended from their vehicles, and went on foot to the Hotel
<de Ville, traversing the Rue St. Honore. ... I marched, with
sword drawn, beside Target, with whom I conversed ; he was
full of inexpressible joy. It shone from the eyes of everyone,
and I have never seen anything like it. It is impossible that the
triumph of Paulus Emilius was more splendid."

In that hour of triumphant joy, when the millen-
nium seemed at hand, to Camille and others around
him there came no foreknowledge of a day, not long
distant for some of them, when they would retrace
their steps over the self -same route, on a very different
errand.

For on that later day, the order of the journey
would be so far changed that, starting at the gates of
the Conciergerie, and "traversing the Rue St. Honore,"
it would end, and not begin, at the Place of the
Revolution, heretofore known as the Place Louis XV.

V

IN one day, in one moment, Camille Desmoulins
had become a famous man.
On July nth he was a disregarded, shabby
little lawyer, with journalistic tendencies, of no
account to anybody except his few friends, and treated,
even by them, more with contemptuous kindliness
than with respect.

On July 1 2th he was suddenly thrown into promi-
nent relief against the flaming background of armed
rebellion which he had helped to stir up. The transi-
tion was rapid ; almost too rapid for Camille's
equilibrium. Decidedly his head was turned, and
it is not surprising that this should have been the case.
It must always be intoxicating to be set up as a popular
idol, and this is true, above all, of the heroes of that
fickle Parisian mob, which is always ready to fly to
extremes, whether of love or hate.

And it was ever part of Camille's nature to love
praise, admiration and popularity. For the very
reason that hitherto he had been undervalued, the
unaccustomed consideration of all around him now
tempted him to extravagances.

For the whole aspect of affairs in Paris and in France
was altered. Momoro, the cautious printer of the
Rue de la Harpe, was' now no longer afraid to publish
Camille's pamphlet, " La France Libre."

Momoro was a man indeed who moved with the
times. From henceforth he styled himself the
" First Printer of the National Liberty." Later, he
was to become one of the most violent supporters
of the Terror, an extremist whom at last the Terrorist

75

76 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Government itself threw into prison for preaching the
" agrarian " law of ultra-socialism when sent on a
mission into the provinces.

On July 15 th, the very day after the taking of the
Bastille, " La France Libre " was published. The
pamphlet met with instantaneous success. This
" song of the Gallic lark," as it has been called by
M. Louis Combes, voiced the thoughts which many
were now formulating in their minds, although as
yet they dared scarcely express them in words.

, On the title-page Camille inscribes himself as
" M. Camille Desmoulins, Avocat au Parlement de
Paris, Electeur du Bailliage de Vermandois."

A motto or epigraph follows, according to the
custom of the time, and, according to Camille's own
custom, the quotation is taken from the classics.
He uses Cicero's phrase : " Quae quoniam in foveam
incidit, obruatur," translating it with characteristic
freedom in the words : " Puisque la bete est dans le
piege, qu'on I'assomme."

Camille strikes a note of daring at the very beginning
of the pamphlet by stating boldly that : —

" There have always been in France patriots who have sighed
for liberty. The return of that liberty to the French people
was reserved for our days. ... I thank Thee, O Heaven, for
permitting me to be born at the end of this century."

Then follows a violent tirade against the clergy
and the nobility — " the Aristocrats, the Vampires
of the State " — who have crushed out liberty. After
describing the oppression, the almost slavery which
the people of France have suffered for so long, Camille,
with an abrupt transition which is at once extraor-
dinarily clever and extraordinarily cynical, holds up
before the sovereign People another and still more
tangible inducement to rebellion.

" For myself I feel courage enough to die for the liberty of
my country, and a very powerful motive will draw those

THE NORTH WIND '^^

whom the righteousness of this cause is not sufficient to
determine.

" Never was richer spoil offered to the victors. Forty
thousand palaces, hotels, castles, two-fifths of the riches of
France to be distributed amongst them, will be the prize of
valour."

Camille discourses at length on this subject and
then makes another dramatic change of front.

" But we will turn our eyes from these horrors," he says
feelingly. "And may Heaven deign to withdraw them from
above our heads ! No, without doubt, that which we dread
will never take place. I only wish to frighten the aristocrats
by showing them their inevitable extinction if they resist longer
the call of reason, the wish and supplication of the people.

" These gentlemen will be in no hurry to expose themselves
to lose the riches which it is easy for them to preserve, and of
which assuredly we have no wish to despoil them."

This whole preamble reminds one irresistibly of
Mark Antony's famous speech, where Shakespeare
pictures him stirring up the worst passions of the
Roman mob, whilst affecting only to assuage their
anger.

The two next sections treat of the moot questions
of the deliberation by head or by order in the States-
General, and of that other burning theme of the
day : " What is a Constitution ? "

Camille's arguments touching these points are
simple enough and those which were most likely to
appeal to the popular spirit of the time. He avers
that every usage, such as the vote by order, must have
been originally ratified by the people. Therefore,
this same people who have decreed may also annul
and make the vote by head obligatory : —

" The present will derogates the will of the past. The
generation which is no more mvist cede its powers to us who
live, or, otherwise, let the dead rise from their tombs and come
to maintain their old usages against us."

78 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

In the second section there is a curiously anti-
socialistic paragraph, one of those strange contradic-
tions which are so common in the Republican writings
of that day, and which prove how very rarely it was
that the men of the Revolution wished to carry into
practice their theories of absolute equality.

After making use of the decidedly weak argument
that because the majority of the people have never
yet passed an agrarian law, it is certain, therefore,
that they never will, Camille goes on to say : —

" Legislators have deleted from the body politic the class of
people whom they called at Rome proletariats, as being vTseful
only to breed children and to recruit society ; they have rele-
gated them to a division without influence over the assemblies
of the people. Withdrawn from political affairs by a thousand
cares, this division can never become dominant in the State.

" The very consequences of their condition bar them from
the assemblies. Can the servant give his opinion with the master,
and the beggar with those upon whose alms he subsists ? "

So much for Camille's views of Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity when he was discussing the question
of putting the theory into practical use.

The third section is perhaps the most famous
portion of the pamphlet. It treats of the clergy, and
begins with the words : " C'est la clergie qui a fait le
clerge," which means, literally, " It is clericalism
which has made the clergy."

Camille then proceeds to argue rather appositely
that, if it is not as clerics or clerks that churchmen take
the first place in the community, surely it cannot be
as ministers of that religion which commands that its
priests should take the lowest and not the highest seat.

There follows a bitter and sweeping tirade against
the priesthood, which is succeeded by a passage con-
taining a fairly clear and succinct exposition of
Camille's views on the subject of religion.

" Atheism is treated as a species of delirium, and with
reason. Yes, there is a God, we see it plainly as we cast our

THE NORTH WIND 79

eyes around the universe ; but we see it like those unfortunate
children who, having been exposed and deserted by their
parents, perceive that they have a father ; the course of nature
ordains that they must have had one ; but it is in vain that
they call upon this father ; he does not reveal himself.

" It is fruitlessly that I seek to find what cult pleases him
most ; he does not manifest himself by any sign, and his
thunderbolt strikes alike our churches and the mosques of
others.

" It is not God who has need of religion, it is mankind.
God does not require incense, processions and prayers, but we
have need of hope, of consolation, and of one who will reward
us. In the face of this indifference which he manifests towards
all cults, can we not give ourselves a national religion ? "

The passage follows which has been already quoted
in a previous chapter, where Camille pleads the cause
of a gayer religion, a religion like that of the Greeks
and Romans. Pagan as he was by nature, he rebelled
against the cult of Christianity, which promised him
no recompense in this world save poverty and sorrow.

He remarks, with some show of reason, it must be
confessed, that the worst kings of France were always
the most outwardly scrupulous in religious observances,
and finally concludes that : " We must be given a
courageous religion, beneficial to the State, if its
ministers wish still to belong to the first order."

In the fourth section, which treats of the nobility,
Camille inveighs bitterly against the arbitrary barriers
of rank and caste.

He calls upon his fellow-citizens to annihilate these
absurd and onerous distinctions. He ends by assuring
the nobles themselves that, if they willingly resign
their rights, with a good grace, the people will re-
ciprocate by restoring those rights to them again,
which strikes one as neither logical nor consistent
after the diatribe which has gone before.

Camille afterwards proceeds to give a concentrated
history of all the kings of France from Philippe le Bel
downwards. This portion of the pamphlet is frankly

8o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

copied, in scheme at least, from one of the works of
Mirabeau, " Lettres de Cachet." Camille's comments
certainly do not err on the side of flattery ; indeed,
in many instances his remarks are grossly and wilfully
exaggerated. According to him, the whole line of French
kings were forgers, coiners, murderers and worse, and,
contrary to expectation, he becomes no milder in his
statements as he approaches nearer to his own times.

It is possible for us now, after the lapse of almost
two centuries, to see what a large proportion of truth
there is in Camille's estimate of the characters and
reigns of Louis XIV and his immediate successors,
the Regent Orleans and Louis XV. At the time when
he wrote it certainly required courage to describe in
this fashion the reigning monarch's own forbears.

In concluding this section Camille uses his new-
found weapon of bitter raillery.

" Such was the reign of Louis the Well-Beloved ; but he
was not wicked. And what more could he have done, cried
Mirabeau, if he had been ? Tarquin, nevertheless, cried
Cicero, was not wicked. He was not cruel, he was only proud,
and our fathers have expelled him ; but these were Romans.
And we . . . pardon, dear fellow-citizens, when I attended
the National Assembly I said : We are worth more than the
Romans, and Cyneas has seen nothing equal to this in the
Senate."

In reading such words as these one does not wonder
that Momoro hesitated to publish this pamphlet. As
Camille himself naively remarks : " Je m'attends aux
clameurs que ce paragraphe va exciter."

But if he is outspoken here, in the last section the
bold writer is even bolder. He there discusses :
" What Constitution is the best for France ? "

Camille argues with plenty of skill that it is the
kingly state which corrupts even the best of men,
not the man who, by his faults, lowers the kingly
state. If absolute power is placed in the hands of
any one man, it invites him to become a tyrant.

THE NORTH WIND 8i

Camille avows his own Republican views in an
extraordinarily" open manner when one considers that,
as Aulard says in speaking of this exact period : " I
have searched thoroughly and I have found only one
Frenchman who, at this time, called himself a Re-
publican ; it was Camille Desmoulins. In his ' France
Libre,' written at the end of June, 1789, and placed
on sale on the July 17th following, he declares his
preference for a Republic before a Monarchy."

Notwithsta.nding this, Camille does not yet avowedly
wish to throw the King overboard. He would still
accept a limited — a very limited — monarchy. Except
in that he has not fulfilled his promises to the people,
Camille has no quarrel with the King as an individual.
In speaking of him, indeed, he uses the old argument
of Brutus : " I love Louis XVI personally, but the
monarchy is none the less odious to me."

Finally, Camille paints a word picture of the
millennium to come, when the National Assembly shall
have completed the work which it has so nobly begun.
In what are by far the finest passages of the whole
pamphlet Camille acclaims the time when there
will be liberty of commerce, liberty of conscience,
liberty to write, liberty to speak ; a national army, a
national treasury, and then, carried away by enthusi-
asm, he cries : " Why should we wish to be Bretons,
Bearnais, Flemings ? Could there be under heaven a
finer name than that of Frenchman ? To that famous
name all ought to sacrifice their own ! "

Camille brings the whole work to a conclusion with
one of those classical parallels of which he was always
so fond : —

" Following the example of that Lacedemonian, Otriades,
who, alone, and wounded to death upon the field of battle,
raised a trophy with his trembling hands and wrote in his
blood : * Sparta has vanquished,' I feel that I could die joy-
fully for such a splendid cause, and, pierced with wounds, I
also would write in my blood : ' France is free ! ' "

82 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

This pamphlet is a very characteristic example of
Camille's early work. From a literary point of view,
it is exceedingly interesting. The style is clear, easy
and unforced ; the choice of words is just ; the
writer seems to gain his effects without effort. Every-
where may be found that distinction and felicity of
phrase which causes Camille's writings to stand out in
such vivid relief against those of his fellow-journalists
of the Revolutionary period. Indeed, to receive full
justice the " France Libre " must be read in its original
language.

As to the boldness of expression, that is the more
remarkable when we remember that, at this time, no
more servile press could have been found than that of
France. This reckless disregard of consequences, this
literary outspokenness was always one of Camille's
most marked characteristics. It was at once the curse
and the honour of his life and work. In the beginning
it brought him fame ; later, it was to draw down upon
him the bitter hatred of the Royalists and Moderates.
Yet later still, he was to be overwhelmed with self-
reproach when he saw the consequences of some of
those written words of his, and in the end it was his
rash and generous frankness which led him to death.

" La France Libre," as we have said, was enormously
successful. It firmly established Camille's name as a
writer. Nevertheless, from a pecuniary point of view
the publication was not satisfactory. The author
received only thirty louis for the pamphlet, and but
twelve louis for his next work, the " Discours de la
Lanterne," which was probably published at about
the middle or end of August. The only date given
on the title-page is that of " L'an I" de la Liberte."

In this " Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens "
we find Camille at his best and worst. It is not a
studied and reasoned piece of work like its predecessor,
written in the full knowledge that publication meant
probable imprisonment or even worse. Now that the

THE NORTH WIND 83

Bastille had fallen and the first year of liberty had
dawned, Camille could say what he pleased. He was
the spoilt favourite of the mob, and it is the mob
whom he addresses.

The " Lanterne " made a direct appeal to the
populace, and it is an appeal which is unworthy of its
author. He played to the gallery when he called
himself " Procureur-General de la Lanterne," using
that title which was afterwards to be so often cast in
his teeth.

It is in order to attract attention, to make a laugh,
as it were, that Camille writes in the person of that
ill-famed " lamp-iron " in the Place de Greve, at the
corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, where so many
impromptu executions had taken place, including that
of the wretched Foulon.

Not that the whole pamphlet bears the imprint of
bloodthirstiness. Cruel as it is, this work of Camille's
has a worse reputation than it deserves — chiefly
amongst those who have never read one word of it.

The " Discours " bears as an epigraph the famous
passage of St. John's Gospel : " Qui male agit odit
lucem," Camille's free and irreverent translation of
which runs : " Rogues object to the lamp-post."

The author opens the pamphlet in that lightly
jesting spirit which was afterwards to render him so
famous.

" Brave Parisians," he writes, in the person of the lamp-
post, " what thanks do I not owe to you ? You have rendered me
for ever celebrated and blessed amongst lanterns. What are
the lanterns of Sosia and of Diogenes in comparison with me ?
He sought for one man, and I have found two hundred
thousand. . . . Yes, I am the queen of lanterns. Citizens,
I wish to render myself worthy of the honour which you have
done me by your choice."

Camille then goes on to eulogise at great length
that famous night of August 4th, when the nobility
voluntarily and on the impulse of the moment gave

84 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

up their feudal rights : " It is this night which has
reinstated the French people in the rights of man,
which has declared all citizens equal."

In this passage and in many of the pages which follow
there is no sign of cruelty or vindictiveness. Certainly
Camille complains later that certain proved con-
spirators against the sovereign people have been allowed
to slip from the hands of the law, but he adds : —

" Not that I love too hasty justice ; you know that I gave
evidences of discontent during the execution of Foulon and
Berthier ; I broke the fatal cord twice in succession. I was
perfectly convinced of the treason and of the faults of these
two rascals ; but the executioner put too much precipitation
into the affair. I would have liked an interrogatory and the
revelation subsequently of a number of facts."

Yet, in spite of this, he continues throughout the
pamphlet to play with the idea of murder, treating it
as a thing of little account, palliating and excusing deeds
of violence, even while not openly advocating them.

Even in these early days Camille makes the famous
accusation which he and others were so often to repeat
later, the accusation that the counter-revolutionary
party were endeavouring to disgust the populace with
their own work by encouraging licence and extreme
measures.

Here is the germ of that idea which afterwards led
to Camille's violent diatribes against the " Hebertists "
and " Ultras." He warns the people against this
attempt, and especially against the books published
with that aim in view.

Yet after abusing one de Tellier for writing a
pamphlet of this description Camille with generous
inconsistency protests with all his might against the
fact that this journalist has been sent to the Abbaye
for his opinions, and demands, in his own unrivalled
manner, the instant liberation of the " poor devil of
an author."

THE NORTH WIND 85

This is followed by an enthusiastic address to
Mirabeau, whom Camille was just beginning to look
upon as his most powerful friend : afterwards, by a
rather abrupt transition, he breaks into an impassioned
defence of the Palais Royal, which he speaks of as the
" Forum of Paris."

The rest of the pamphlet is mainly taken up with
one of Camille's usual denunciations of a dominant
cult in religion. A national, universal, unsectarian
religion is the only one that he will recognise — such a
religion as was put to the test by the Conventional
Government after Camille's death, only to fail most
ignominiously. Indeed the attempt was so hopelessly
unsuccessful that men were fain to legislate for the
return of Catholicism.

But this was in the future ; in the meantime,
Camille declaims against dogmatism at great length,
supporting his remarks on a state religion by a phrase
which has become somewhat famous.

" Anyone in the world," he says, " would turn
heretic, schismatic, or even Jew, if it were necessary,
to avoid paying anything."

If I have seemed to defend the " Discours de la
Lanterne " against the charges of bloodthirstiness
which are so freely brought against it, it is not from
any wish to palliate the dangerous tendencies of
this pamphlet.

Still, without in any way excusing Camille, it is
necessary to do justice to what is in many ways a very
brilliant piece of work.

There are fine passages in the " Discours," passages
which manifest nothing but patriotism and a real
desire for the well-being of France. Camille forgets
his audience, as it were, when he is describing his ideal
Republic, in which there shall be no sorrow nor blood-
shed, where all shall dwell together in happiness and
love.

Then he remembers that he is addressing a mob

86 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

whose present sport is bloodshed and who require to
be humoured ; he promptly pulls himself up and
reverts to the playful cruelty of the opening para-
graphs.

Throughout the whole pamphlet Camille's scholar-
ship and erudition are always manifest, if never
ostentatiously displayed. Perhaps no writer of that
time could make use of classical quotations and
allusions with more skill or with less appearance of
pedantry.

In spite of everything which could and can be
advanced in its favour, it is very evident that Camille
himself was ashamed of this work of his. One
cannot read his letters at this time without seeing
that he took little or no pride in the " Discours."
It was published anonymously, and it was not until
the pamphlet proved an unexpected success that
Camille acknowledged its authorship, although one
cannot help fancying that the style must have been
unmistakable to any intelligent critic.

Writing to his father at the end of September, the
young man says : —

" The work of the ' Lanterne ' is not worth anything like
as much as the other, and it would have caused me to decline
in public opinion if I had put my name to it. However, I have
heard many nice things said about it, and, unless my publisher
wilfully deceives me, no one has spoken badly of it to him."

In a second letter, two days later, he refers to the
pamphlet again : —

" My ' Discours de la Lanterne ' is selling well, and the
edition is almost exhausted. It is the only brochure which is
being purchased in these days, but everyone is so tired of all
these pamphlets that I hesitate to allow a second edition to be
struck off."

It is really something of a relief to find that Camille
could take no honest satisfaction in this particular
piece of work.

THE NORTH WIND 87

Mr. J. H. McCarthy, in his brilliant history of the
French Revolution, has given us his estimate of the
" Discours," an estimate which, if it errs slightly
perhaps on the side of severity, is nevertheless just
enough in the main.

" It was a very brilliant pamphlet," he says, " and it had a
great success. It is not pleasant reading now, after the interval
of more than a century, but it is easy to understand how it
affected and attracted the unstable, the agitated minds of
1789. ... It shows us a Camille whose epigrams are scrawled
in blood, who finds an amused delight in cruelty like a gamin.
... He came in the fullness of time to regret its utterances
bitterly. ... It is a horrible piece of work, and its influence
was incalculably evil, but with all its horror it charms by its
genius, by its dazzling insolence, by the wit which wings the
most venomed shafts of a murderous personality."

It is true that the very gaiety, eloquence and charm
of Camille's style were perilous. To him, hanging
is a jest, murder a very fine art ; at least, so it must
have appeared to his readers.

It was indeed a never-ceasing surprise to Camille
that his writings were taken so seriously, although he
would have disclaimed such a sentiment indignantly.
It was not that he did not mean what he wrote : he
was thoroughly in earnest — at the time.

Then . . . the wind changed, and Camille's
opinions with it, but the works of his pen remained,
a witness of what he had been, of what he was no
longer.

Very bitterly was Camille to regret during the last
months of his Hfe that he " had written so much."
Sometimes remorse came to him swiftly, as in the case
of his " Brissot Unveiled." We shall see how in the
midst of the trial and condemnation of the Giron-
dists, the realisation came suddenly to the journalist
that it was he who had killed these men, his former
friends, by means of his book. And the bitterness of
that realisation lay in this : that he had already come

88 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

almost to the point of abjuring the opinions which
had led him to write the fatal pamphlet.

As to Camille's consistent and unvarying rancour
against sectarian religion and its ministers, one must
remember that this was a characteristic both of his
time and of his nation. For his was an age which
absolutely lacked religion ; so much so, that the
simple, unaffected piety of Louis XVI was considered
something extraordinary, almost outside nature.

Camille did not go so far as many, nay, most, of
his contemporaries ; he was never, in word or deed,
an atheist. As he wrote in later days : " I have always
believed in the immortality of the soul."

But there is a strain of irreverence in his writings
which may be met with in those of French authors
of all ages. It is a strange and alien thing to us of
other nations, who blaspheme, should we wish to do
so, in more downright fashion.

Camille knew the Scriptures well ; he quotes from
them freely, and often appositely, but, as it were,
with his tongue in his cheek, in a manner which jars
on us. Again and again he uses and misuses texts to
serve his purpose.

For instance, in that famous number of the " Vieux
Cordelier," where he so vehemently denounced
Hebert and his followers, he paraphrases the Gospel
in this fashion, when he says, with terrible and bitter
raillery, referring to Hebert's scurrilous journal ;
" II y aura plus de joie dans le ciel pour un Pere
Duchesne qui se convertit, que pour quatre-vingt-
dix-neuf Vieux Cordeliers qui n'ont pas de besoin de
penitence."

His famous answer to the interrogations before the
Revolutionary Tribunal has been often quoted as the
extreme of blasphemy. It is well known that when
asked his age he replied : " I am thirty-three, the age
of the Sansculotte Jesus ; a critical age for every
patriot."

THE NORTH WIND 89

It is quite certain, however, that in speaking thus
Camille was not in the least degree deUberately
irreverent.

Before that Tribunal men were either silent, or set
themselves to make phrases. Danton had given
Camille an example of the latter course, and it was,
besides, natural to the journalist to speak on occasion,
as we should say, for effect.

Moreover, it must be remembered that the term
" Sansculotte " as applied to Christ was in no way
originated by Camille at the moment. It was a
phrase in common use at this time, as we learn from
the contemporary writer Mercier in his " New Picture
of Paris," published in 1800.

" Who would have guessed," he says, " that our Lord Jesus
Christ would have been called the Sansculotte Jesus, that he
would have no other surname in the Journals, in the Tribunals,
at the Jacobins ; and that this name was not given as a sarcasm,
but as a true title of respect. A prodigious change then has
taken place in the ideas of the people ; the permission of saying
everything created a peculiar kind of spirit, which, joined to a
good portion of ignorance, was only more humorous."

The publication of these, his first important
literary works, brings to a close the opening phase of
Camille's life.

From his early youth up till this time, the wind
which guided the young man's course had been
settled in the north. Bitterly cold and biting it blew,
clear and pitiless — a true wind of liberty — and the
weathercock obeyed its touch.

It is such an influence as this which is evident in
Camille's early work. All is clear and well-defined ;
there is nothing misty, nebulous, or indecisive in this
writing. Even that sunny gaiety which is never quite
absent from anything which Camille's hand has
touched appears now sharp and frosty, like sparkling
sunshine on snow.

90 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Already there were signs that the wind was changing.
Camille's cold winter of discontent was over, for a
time. In a little while he was to feel the pleasant
warmth of the sun of prosperity and, under the
influence of the western wind of success and love, we
shall see our weathercock veer and point to another
quarter.

PART TWO
THE WEST WIND

" The winds come lightly whispering from the West,
Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deeps serene."

Byron.

I

WITH the publication of his two famous
pamphlets began the second period of
Camille's life, and that which was in
most respects the happiest.

Hitherto we have seen him gloomy, unsuccessful,
unhappy. Now he had become suddenly famous, and
it was not long before happiness followed on the heels
of success.

His first pubHcations, as we have seen, were extra-
ordinarily well received, and they made for him a name.
As he naively remarks in a letter to his father on
September 20th : " On ne dit plus d'un auteur appele
Desmoulins, mais ' une brochure de Desmoulins.' "

Early in September a third production from
Camille's pen appeared, " The Protest in favour of
the Marquis de St.-Huruge." In this defence of the
famous mob orator, who had recently been arrested and
imprisoned in the Chatelet, the journalist made skilful
use of his legal knowledge, although the pamphlet,
like its subject, has lost much of its interest for us.

Camille's letters to his father at this time reflect
his state of mind very clearly. They are so uncon-
sciously self-revelationary, they display such ingenuous
conceit. He is flattered and spoilt, and he knows it —
he says so very frankly — but ... he certainly has a
very good opinion of himself. He is feverishly
anxious for the appreciation of his father ; above all,
he longs to make an impression upon the sceptical
Guisards, although he is careful to insist upon his
absolute disregard for their opinions.

93

94 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

It is evident that M. Desmoulins, senior, had
heard an exaggerated account of Camille's exploits.
He believed that his scapegrace son had become more
notorious than famous. It is plainly in answer to a
reproving letter from his father that Camille writes
as follows on September 20th: —

" The best response to your letter full of reproaches is to
send you the three works. I have prepared an immense packet,
and you will find in it four copies of ' La France Libre,' of the
' Lanterne,' and a number of copies of a little leaflet which has
been infinitely praised, and upon which I am complimented
everywhere (the ' Defence of the Marquis de St.-Huruge ').
In addition I send with this letter a number of the ' Chronicle
of Paris ' : compare these written and printed estimates of
writers whom I do not know, and whose praise I am not rich
enough to pay for, with the insults of our Guisards, and with
what you call public indignation.

" For the rest, when I send you the witness of the journals
and when I tell you, as I did in my last letter, the infinitely
flattering things that I have heard about ' La France Libre,'
I do this on your account alone, in order that you may not
blush for me, and not that you should excite the envy of our
compatriots by repeating it all to them ; I know that nobody
is a prophet in his own country, and it is useless to try to open
the eyes of those whom the light wounds.

" If you hear ill spoken of me, console yourself with the re-
membrance of the testimony of MM. Mirabeau, Target,
de Robespierre and more than two hundred deputies. . . .
Recollect that a great part of the capital names me amongst
the principal authors of the Revolution. Many even go so far
as to say that I am the sole author. . . . But the testimony
which flatters me the most is that of my own conscience, it is
the interior knowledge that what I have done is good. I have
contributed to free my country, I have made myself a name.
. . . Nothing can give me another moment so happy as that
one when, upon July 12th, I was, I will not say applauded by
ten thousand people, but stifled with embraces and tears. Per-
haps then I saved Paris from entire ruin, and the nation from
the most horrible servitude. . . . No, those who speak ill of
me deceive you ; they lie to themselves and at the bottom of
their hearts they wish to have a son like me."

THE WEST WIND 95

The innocent vanity of this last paragraph is really
delicious. Certainly Camille's head was turned with a
vengeance.

For the first time in his life he was making an
appearance in Parisian society. As he tells us, Mercier,
the author of the " Tableaux de Paris," and others
introduced him into good houses, and he could dine
out whenever he wished. It was this fact which was
at once his greatest delight and his greatest shame.
Camille could be entertained, but he could not
entertain.

His literary work was enormously successful, but it
was very far as yet from being profitable. He had
sold his two first pamphlets outright for a ridiculously
small sum, and his finances were in an extremely
critical state. Nevertheless, Camille had come to the
conclusion, naturally enough, that his present squalid
lodgings were not suitable for a man of his improved
position. He wanted to furnish rooms of his own,
where he could receive his friends, and accordingly
he arranged to take a suite in the Hotel de Nivernais.

But inconsequent Camille had not reckoned upon
the cost of furniture and of housekeeping on his own
account. As he ruefully writes to his father on
September 22nd, the expenses have absorbed all that
he made by his last pamphlet. In short, he asks
M. Desmoulins tentatively to send him five or six
louis.

His father did not rise to the occasion. Possibly he
rather distrusted Camille's own account of his sudden
rise in the world, knowing this son of his of old.
However that may be, he seems to have taken no notice
of Camille's request, for on September 29th we find
the young man writing to enquire anxiously whether
his father has received his last letter. Apparently
M. Desmoulins' only response was highly unsatis-
factory, for on October 8th, the " chief author of the
Revolution " wrote again in a most piteous strain.

96 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

With a certain show of reason Camille insists upon
the vital importance to him of a settled address, if he is
to take the part which is his due in municipal politics.

" With a domicile I should have been president, com-
mandant of a district, representative of the Commune of
Paris," he complains. " Instead of which, I am only a dis-
tinguished writer. ...

" But this is the astonishing part of it all ! For ten years
past I have complained in these terms, and in the end it has
been easier for me to make a Revolution, to upset France,
than to obtain from my father a paltry fifteen louis, and a
helping hand to enable me to set up an estabhshment. What
a man you are ! With all your wit and all your virtues, you
have never been able to understand me. You have constantly
calumniated me, you have eternally called me a prodigal, a
spendthrift, and nothing could be more untrue. . . .

" Aid me in these circumstances and send me a bed, if you
cannot permit me to buy one here. Can you refuse me a bed ?
... I have a reputation in Paris, they consult me upon great
affairs ; they invite me to dinner ; there is no pamphleteer
whose works sell so well. I only lack a domicile ; I beseech
you to help me, send me six louis, or at least a bed ! "

Camille explains that his ready money has been
exhausted in paying his debts. " I am almost without
creditors, but also without money ! "

Probably M. Desmoulins took these reproaches at
their right valuation, and made allowances like the
wise man that he was. It seems that Camille's letter
led to no quarrel and obtained for him the help which
he needed. A few months later we shall find the
young man writing to his home in very different
spirits.

It was during these summer months, immediately
after the fall of the Bastille, that the friendship began
between Camille Desmoulins and Gabriel-Honore de
Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau. This friendship was a
very real thing on both sides, although it was spoilt
and finally broken off by quarrels and misunder-
standings.

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THE WEST WIND 97

It would appear that Camille first brought himself
to the notice o£ the great Revolutionary Tribune as
early as the spring of 1789, by asking for a post on the
staff of the paper which Mirabeau edited.

This journal was designed to describe the proceed-
ings of the States-General in detail, but it only
appeared for a short time at the beginning of May
under its original title of " Journal des Etats-Gener-
aux." The paper was unauthorised, and Mirabeau
was not in good repute with the Government ;
moreover, he attacked Necker in one of the early
issues, and for this reason among others further
publication of the journal was forbidden by an order
of the Council.

Mirabeau, however, eluded this decree by con-
tinuing to publish the paper under the title of " Lettres
de Mirabeau a ses Commettants," and it was circulated
very freely in Paris and the Provinces. After the
fall of the Bastille and the subsequent enfranchisement
of the Press the name of the journal was altered to
that of " Courier de Provence."

Although there is no evidence that Camille ever
contributed personally to Mirabeau's paper, it is
probable that the great man foresaw that the journalist
might be useful to him in the future. No one ever
formed more rapid or more just opinions of the men
about him than Mirabeau, and there is no doubt that
he perceived the spark of genius in the impecunious
little lawyer — perceived too that it might be utilised
to serve Count Mirabeau and, through him, France.

He made much of Camille, he invited him to his
house, gave him such dinners as the young fellow had
never probably conceived as possible, showed him life
in more senses of the word than one.

Camille was absolutely dazzled, and small wonder.
Mirabeau was rapidly becoming the most prominent
man of his day, and he was as great in fascination as
in all else. Where he cared sufficiently to exert his

98 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

power — and there is little doubt that he cared for
Camille — he could be irresistible.

And Camille, to use his own forcible words, loved
Mirabeau " comme une maitresse." We cannot do
better than quote from one of his letters to Brissot,
written after the death of Mirabeau : —

" Mirabeau made me live with him under the same roof at
Versailles," he says. " He flattered me by his esteem, he
touched me by his friendship, he mastered me by his genius
and his great qualities. I loved him to idolatry."

At first Camille thought of Mirabeau only as a
mighty patron, able, if he was pleased to do so, to give
him employment as a journalist.

On September 29th, however, we find the young
man writing to his father in high triumph, to tell
him that the great man now treats him as a familiar
friend : —

" For eight days past I have been staying at Versailles with
Mirabeau. Every instant he takes my hand, he pats me on
the back. ... I feel that his table, too delicate and too over-
loaded, will corrupt me. His burgundies and his maraschino
have an attraction which I seek vainly to hide from myself,
and I have all the difficulty in the world to regain my re-
publican austerity and to detest the aristocrats whose crime
it is to enjoy these excellent dinners. I prepare motions for
Mirabeau, and he calls this initiating me into great affairs."

It is very plain from this last remark that Mirabeau
was making use of Camille, as he made use of everybody
for one purpose or another. However, it would appear
that on this occasion the young man outstayed his
welcome, for we find him writing on October 8th : —

" I have passed two charming weeks with Mirabeau ; but,
seeing that I was no longer useful to him, I bade him farewell,
and I have returned to Paris. We have parted to meet again,
and we are good friends ; he has invited me to come and spend
eight days with him whenever I like. During my sojourn at
Versailles, he asked me to compose a memoir of the town of
Belesme against its sub-delegate and intendant. I have done it."

THE WEST WIND 99

It was thus that the friendship began which was
to end sadly, at no very distant date, amidst clouds of
doubt and dissension.

In the meantime the Revolution was not going for-
ward as fast as the people had confidently hoped and
expected. The retrograde Court party was still very
strong, although much weakened by the incessant
out-going tide of emigration. As for the National
Assembly, its work was more or less at a standstill, and
it had not yet given France the promised Constitution.
Its very composition militated against any combined
or united effort. Truer words were never spoken than
those of Mirabeau with reference to the States-
General.

" More than five hundred Frenchmen," he said, " gathered
from all parts of the Kingdom, without a leader, without
organisation, all free, all equal ; none with any authority,
none feeling himself under any obligation to obey, and all,
like Frenchmen, wishing to be heard before they would listen."

At last, on October 5th, maddened by famine and
by the open insults of the Court, the people took
matters into their own hands. Everyone knows the
story of how a great concourse of men and women
executed the famous march to Versailles on that wet
autumn day, how they camped round the Palace, a
gaunt menacing throng, how, in the early dawn of
the following morning, they broke into the house of
their King, and would have assassinated the Queen but
for the self-devotion of a mere handful of Royal guards.

The market women of Paris, the men of the slum
fauxbourgs, gained their point. They brought back
the Royal family to the capital by main force, and
obliged them to take up their abode in the dilapidated
palace of the Tuileries, practically prisoners, so far
as free will over their own movements was concerned.

Camille hailed this event as a fresh victory of the
populace — as a crowning victory. Writing on October

100 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

5th, he says : " You have heard no doubt of the great
Revolution which has been effected : Consummatum
est."

It was at about this time that Camille began to
contemplate the possibility of publishing a journal
of his own. There was a fashion at that time for
personal news-sheets, usually produced weekly, of
which the entire contents, or at least the bulk of them,
were written by one man alone.

This form of journalism was born of the Revolution,
and the newly attained freedom of the Press. It was a
method of airing their views which appealed irre-
sistibly to the young writers of both parties, and it
had an especial fascination for Camille.

Probably he had no difficulty in finding a printer
willing to publish this new venture of his. Camille
was already well known as a writer ; more than that,
he was popular.

But whether the paper, when once started, would
be successful or not, was the question which must
have tormented Camille day and night before that
first number of his journal was published on November
28th, 1789.

The new publication was entitled the " Revolutions
de France et de Brabant," and it appeared weekly in
the form of a little octavo pamphlet in a grey paper
cover. An extract from the prospectus which was
distributed beforehand will give some idea of the
scope of the paper and also of the spirit in which
Camille published it : —

" This journal will appear every Saturday," it runs. " Each
number will be divided into three sections : ist Section.
France. 2nd Section. Brabant, and the other kingdoms
which, adopting the cockade and demanding a national
assembly, merit a place in this journal. 3rd Section. In order
to draw back, as far as possible, the frontiers of our censorial
empire, under the title of varieties this paragraph will embrace
all which can interest my dear fellow citizens and amuse them

THE WEST WIND loi

this winter in their chimney corners. I await the maledictions
of the aristocrats ; I see them, extended idly on their couches,
spring up in fury and seize the tongs : ' Vile author, if thou

wert here ! ' But I remember what my dear Cicero said :

' Subeundae sunt bonis inimicitiae ; subeantur.'

" We have neglected nothing in order to obtain fresh and
reliable news, and hold out to our subscribers the promise of our
epigraph : Quid Novi ? The price of our publication is lo
livres 15 sols for Paris, and 7 livres 10 sols for the provinces,
for three months, carriage paid all over the kingdom."

The paper was illustrated, by Garney, the publisher,
with a weekly caricature. These same engravings, by
the way, were often a cause of great offence to Camille,
for one reason or another.

Charles de Monseignat, in his " Histoire des
Journaux du France," inveighs most bitterly against
these pictures, as infamous productions, and evidently
considers that the journalist was responsible for them.
This was very far from being the case. The caricatures
were entirely provided by the publisher, much against
Camille's wishes, and the editor evidently did not
always even see them before publication. He very
often most vehemently and outspokenly disapproved
of them.

In the seventeenth number of the paper he states
expressly that the illustrations were not his affair.

" I protest," he says, " against the woodcut at the head of
my last number. I have already stated that I do not meddle
with the frontispiece and the figures, except in three or four
instances when I gave the idea."

All those doubts and fears which Camille must have
felt respecting the reception of his journal were soon
dispelled. The paper was instantaneously successful ;
from henceforth the Revolution found a new voice.

On December 4th. Camille writes exultantly to his
father : —

" I forwarded the first number of my journal to you ;
have you not received it ? Please let me know whether it has

I02 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

arrived. I send you two prospectuses. If it is possible to do
so, because nobody is a prophet in his own country, obtain
some subscribers for me. Behold me a journalist and deter-
mined to use to the full the liberty of the Press. My first
number is considered to be perfect ; but shall I be able to
keep it up to this standard ? I am so busy that I write this
to you at two o'clock in the morning."

Camille need not have doubted the continued
success of his venture.

On December 31st he was able to write again, after
several numbers had appeared : —

" Fortune herself grows tired of pursuing me. Judge of
the success of my journal. I have in the town of Marseilles
alone one hundred subscribers, in Dunkirk, one hundred and
forty. If I had foreseen such a sale I would not have agreed
to dispose of the paper to my publisher for two thousand
crowns a year ; it is true that he has promised me four thou-
sand when I shall have arrived at three thousand subscribers
(what Jews these publishers are !).

" Nevertheless, it is not money that I have looked for in this
enterprise, but the defence of my principles. What letters !
What flattering truths I receive ! . . . I am become indifferent
to these eulogies, and as I appeared vain when people were
pleased to humiliate me, so I despise to-day the flattering things
which they address to me. That which touches me far more,
or rather, that which is the only thing which touches me, is the
friendship of patriots and the embraces of those republicans
who come to see me, and some of them from very far away."

One must not infer from this that Camille's paper
was ever popular in the same sense as " L'Ami du
Peuple " or " Le Pere Duchesne."

His style did not appeal to the lower classes to the
same extent as did the solemn invectives of Marat and
the blasphemous obscenities of Hebert. It was like
offering an agricultural labourer expensive champagne ;
he would infinitely prefer stout or ginger-beer.

Nevertheless there were many who could appreciate
that fine writing and ready wit of Camille's ; many
who recognised him, even then, as one of the few

THE WEST WIND 103

great journalists who had sprung up amidst the
throng of mediocre writers. The feeling which one
experiences in reading Camille's journal has never
been better expressed than by Carlyle.

" If in that thick murk of journalism," he writes, " with its
dull blustering, with its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius
greets thee, be sure it is Camille's. The thing that Camille
touches he with his light finger adorns ; brightness plays gentle,
unsuspected, amid horrible confusions ; often is the word of
Camille's worth reading where no other's is."

Certainly from the very first Camille respected
nobody in the pages of his journal. He attacked the
Royalist party with the keen rapier of his wit, finding
their weak points unmercifully, evading with a light
laugh the heavy bludgeons with which they tried to
crush him.

Laughter was ever Camille's most deadly weapon —
as Mirabeau — Tonneau, the Royalist brother of the
great Tribune, and many others learnt to their cost.
Not that it was only the members of the monarchical
party whom he attacked. It was no idle boast which
he made later in Number 69 of the " Revolutions de
France et de Brabant."

" I am neither for Lameth, nor for Barnave, nor for the
Jacobins, I am for the country. ... I have ready for Mirabeau
sometimes the trumpet, sometimes the whip."

Necker, for whose sake he had called the people to
arms on July 12th, soon fell under the journalist's
displeasure, and the " Genevan hypocrite " is the
mildest term which he applies to him.

The fact was that Camille prided himself on saying
exactly what he thought in his journal without fear
of the consequences. He never paused to consider
that what he thought to-day he might not think
to-morrow — that, in the meantime, it was possible for
the wind to change.

It was this thoughtlessness which led him into so

104 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

many terrible mistakes, mistakes which afterwards
he would have given his very life to retrieve, which he
did give his life in trying to retrieve.

Especially at this early period of his literary career
Camille was essentially, to use the words of Charles
de Monseignat, the " gamin de Paris du journalisme,"
laughing at everything, bad or good, contemptible or
worthy of respect.

Under slightly different phraseology the modern
historian Lenotre uses precisely the same simile when,
speaking of Camille, he says : —

" In that mighty movement which upheaved France,
Camille is not to be classed with the thinkers ; he played the
part of a Gavroche, but, like Gavroche, he instinctively knew
what pleased Parisians ; a genius for theatrical effect, playful
audacity, and that bitterly satirical eloquence which carries
away the crowd."

That most painstaking biographer, Jules Claretie,
expresses the exact scope of Camille's talent very
truly.

" He sharpens the edge of his wit," he writes, " until it cuts
like a steel blade, wrought by an artist's hand, delicate as
jeweller's work, but which pierces the heart of an enemy only
the more quickly for that."

Finally the great German historian, von Sybel, has
given us his estimate of the young man with Teutonic
force and strength of language.

" The most gifted of these journalists," he says, speaking of
the generation of writers who sprang up at the outbreak of the
French Revolution, " was, indisputably, Camille Desmoulins,
in whose easy causerie patriotism and licentiousness, love of
freedom and venomous scorn, grace and cruelty were continually
mingled. His writings were hke flowers upon a dung-hill and
his life like a many-coloured but scorching and quickly ex-
tinguished firework."

Yet it must not be imagined that Camille did not
take the power of the Press seriously. In No. 17 of his

THE WEST WIND 105

journal he shows that he knew what manner of edged
tool it was with which he played.

" At the present day," he says, " journalists exercise minis-
terial functions. They denounce, they decree, they rule in
unforeseen matters, they absolve or condemn. Every day
they ascend the orator's tribune, and among them are stentorian
voices which make themselves heard in the eighty-three
departments. Places to hear these orators cost only two sous ;
journals rain down every morning like the manna from heaven ;
and fifty broadsheets enlighten the world each day, punctually
as the sun."

From November 28th, 1789, until the middle of
July, 1 791, the " Revolutions de France et de Brabant "
appeared weekly, making in all eighty-six numbers.
When considered as a whole they form a most remark-
able piece of work, witty, cruel, humorous or tragic,
turn by turn, but always brilliant and always fasci-
nating.

Throughout the winter of 1789 and the spring and
early summer of 1790 Camille edited and wrote the
journal entirely alone. It meant hard and constant
toil, but the work was congenial and, moreover, he
soon found himself in rather more comfortable
circumstances, although it would be a mistake to
suppose that the paper ever brought him in much
more than a bare livelihood.

It was not possible that Camille should continue
weekly to abuse all and sundry without rousing a vast
amount of antagonism against himself. In January,
1790, Sanson, the executioner of Paris, afterwards to
become so infamously famous, brought an action
against the journalist on the plea that he had called
him in his journal a " bourreau," and the Royalist
periodicals assailed him constantly with his own
weapons, although lacking their keen edge.

If Camille is sometimes fierce in his attacks, his
language pales before that of his opponents, the anti-
revolutionary journalists.- These writers were proud

io6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

to consider themselves gentlemen, but nevertheless
they descend too often to utter vulgarity in these
coarse attacks upon their enemy. Their sole idea of
humour often seems to lie in the invention of clumsy
puns, such as that which styled Camille " I'anon des
moulins," which strikes one nowadays as a somewhat
schoolboyish class of wit.

At present Camille laughed at all these assaults.
He could afford to do so, at least in his own opinion.
He gives a very true picture of his normal, or abnormal
state of mind at this time in a letter to his father.

" At one moment I think life a delicious thing," he says,
" and the moment after, it seems almost insupportable, and
this happens to me ten times a day."

The truth is, Camille was not yet completely happy.
He was successful in his chosen profession, he was
popular in a certain section of society, he was even
moderately prosperous, in comparison, that is, with
his former poverty, but all this did not seem to have
brought him much nearer to the desire of his heart.
Although he was now the avowed suitor of Lucile
Duplessis, her father would not hear of the betrothal.
Camille's sudden notoriety did not by any means
increase his value in the eyes of worthy M. Duplessis.
He wanted a safe, well-to-do husband for his lovely
daughter, not an inflammatory firebrand of a journalist,
who might be popular for the moment, but who, at
the next swing of the pendulum, would, as likely as
not, find himself in prison.

It would seem that Lucile had discovered that she
loved Camille ; there were clandestine meetings in
the Luxembourg Gardens, meetings which the girl's
mother connived at, if she did not actually arrange
them. These stolen hours must have been some con-
solation to Camille for the apparent hopelessness of
his suit ; the two could not be completely miserable
while they loved one another.

THE WEST WIND 107

Probably it was during the winter of 1789-90 that
Camille moved into rooms in the Rue de Theatre
Frangais. It was an important step in one respect,
for it meant that he took up his residence in the
district of the Cordeliers, the most progressive section
of Paris, where Danton was the ruling spirit.

When the electoral Assemblies for the States-
General had completed their work in Paris in the
spring of 1789 they were not in all instances immedi-
ately dissolved. That of the Cordeliers continued to
sit in the old convent of the Order from which it took
its name, and was known as the Club or " Republic "
of the Cordeliers.

This Club, which shares the fame of the Jacobins,
was, in these early days, even more advanced in
politics. Its sittings were almost as much frequented
as those of the Jacobins, and the speeches of its orators
were listened to nearly as eagerly.

Camille joined the club in February, 1790, and on the
very day of his initiation we find him mentioned in
connection with a curious little incident. He describes
in his journal his feelings of pride and enthusiasm on
finding himself a member of the famous club, and he
tells how at the conclusion of the sitting it was
announced that a young lady begged to be admitted
to the hall. This was Theroigne de Mericourt, the
famous courtesan, who appeared at the bar to propose
that a Temple of the National Assembly should be
erected on the site of the Bastille.

The enthusiasm with which the suggestion was
received is curiously indicative of the spirit of the
time. A committee, consisting of Danton, Camille,
Fabre d'Eglantine and others, was appointed by the
Club and entrusted with the task of drawing up an
address to the French Nation, to invite patriots to
subscribe to the foundation of this Temple of Liberty,
of Humanity, and of Reason, to which all people
should come to consult their oracle.

io8 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

The address was drawn up on these lines, but it had
little or no practical result. Impressionable Camille,
however, waxes enthusiastic in his journal when
speaking of the beauty of Mademoiselle Theroigne :
" It is the Queen of Sheba," he exclaims, " come to
visit the Solomon of the Districts."

It is in this same month of February that we find
Camille at his cruellest in the pages of the " Revolu-
tions," where he seeks to justify the execution of the
Marquis de Favras. This Royalist, guilty, it would
seem, of no definite crime save that of Royalism, was
ignominiously hung as a scapegoat for the sins of the
Court.

In a number full of classical references and im-
passioned apostrophes to the justice and mercy of the
people, Camille protests vehemently that he will not
listen to " accusations of barbarity against a people,
who rejoice that human justice sometimes acts in the
place of divine vengeance."

Later in the article the journalist even strives to
discount the undeniable bravery with which de
Favras met his death.

" The firmness with which he died," he says, " was that of a
gladiator, who, being mortally wounded, strives to fall with
decency and dignity."

On the fifth day of April, 1794, Camille was to learn
for himself that it is not always so easy a thing to die
with that decency and dignity of which he speaks so
lightly.

In the spring of 1790 a cloud came over Camille's
friendship with Mirabeau. The great orator did not
bear patiently what he no doubt considered the young
man's rather impertinent criticism of his conduct in
the " Revolutions de France." It appears that he
reproved Camille, and it is quite certain that the
journalist took offence, for he never bore reproof in
any form with equanimity.

THE WEST WIND 109

It was apparently Mirabeau, too great a man to be
unforgiving, from whom came the first overtures for
peace ; we find him writing to the younger man on
May 2nd.

" Well, poor Camille," he says, " has your head come right
again ? We have sulked with you, but we forgive you."

And again a little later, in a second letter.

" Adieu, good boy, you deserve to be loved, notwithstanding
your fiery flights."

In spite of these advances the coldness continued,
and there was no real revival of the friendship between
this time and the death of the great man a year later.
If Mirabeau had but realised it, he did not set to work
in the right way to mollify the thin-skinned journalist.
" Poor Camille," " Good boy " — nothing could have
been better calculated to irritate a man of Camille's
peculiar temperament than these phrases. He hated
to be laughed at ; he hated to be treated as young,
and yet it was always his fate to be spoken of in this
manner.

It was the same to the very end. Robespierre's
half-slighting, half -jeering reference to him as a spoilt
boy led to that rash outburst on Camille's part, which
was greatly instrumental in bringing about his arrest
and death.

Yet in justice Camille should have blamed his own
personality and character and not these friends and
enemies of his. He was indeed a boy who never grew
up, the very Peter Pan of the Revolution. People
could not take him seriously ; it is that which makes
him at once so faulty and so lovable.

One little fact seems to sum up the character of the
man. Everyone who knew him, friends and foes alike,
almost without exception spoke of him as " Camille."
There is no other man of that period of whom the
same can be said. What meaning, for instance, would

no CAMILLE DESMOULINS

it convey to most people if one talked of " Gabriel,"
" Georges," or " Jean-Paul," yet such were the
Christian names of Mirabeau, Danton and Marat.

Robespierre, to be sure, is recognisable as " Maxi-
milian," but his contemporaries generally coupled the
name with a prefix, such as " St. Maximilian " or
" King Maximilian."

It is impossible to deny that Marat, in his sardonic
way, was a good judge of character. Hear what he
says of, and to, Camille in the " Ami du Peuple " of
August loth of this year of 1790 : —

" Notwithstanding all your cleverness, my dear Camille,
you are a complete novice in politics. Perhaps that amiable
gaiety which is the fundamental trait of your character and
which shows itself in your treatment of the gravest subjects
opposes itself to serious reflection, but you are vacillating in
your judgments ; you seem to have neither plan nor aim."

A very just estimate, this, of the self-named weather-
cock ; but perhaps we cannot wonder that Camille did
not love Marat.

A French poet, M. Emmanuel des Essarts, wrote
some verses which were inserted by M. Jules Claretie
in the appendix to his history of the Dantonists. No
better description of Camille could be found than that
which is contained in the last lines of this poem.

" Voila le vrai Camille, une ame
Enfantine et mobile, et foUe : oiseau de flamme,
Esprit de faune, et coeur de femme,"

II

THE winter and spring of 1789-90 was
marked by very few great political events.
On February 4th the people of Paris
and of France hailed with their usual
optimism the dawn of a new golden age, when
King Louis, apparently on his own initiative, came
to the Hall of the National Assembly to propose
that the whole country, led by himself in person,
should renew the National Oath, should swear to be
faithful to the King, to the Law and to the forth-
coming Constitution. The oath was accordingly
taken throughout all the districts of Paris with
enthusiasm and ceremonial ; the whole city was
illuminated, and the occasion was treated as a universal
festival.

From the autumn of 1789 until the early summer of
1790 Camille, as we have seen, edited the " Revolutions
de France et de Brabant " alone. The paper con-
tinued to be enormously successful, its circulation
increased daily, and the pressure of work at last became
too great even for the feverishly energetic journalist.

Accordingly early in July, 1790, Camille came to an
arrangement with Stanislas Freron by which the latter
agreed to collaborate in the editorship of the journal.

The paper at this time was published by Laifrey,
and the agreement is still extant in which Camille
undertakes the post of editor for the sum of 10,000
livres annually, out of which he is to pay Freron 3000
livres per annum, on condition that the latter contri-
butes one-third of the contents of the journal.

Ill

112 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Freron was the son of the famous critic and reviewer
of that name. He was something of a scholar and a
capable journalist enough, although never a brilliant
writer in the same sense as Camille. He was already
editor-in-chief of the " Orateur du Peuple," a journal
which was distinctly more violent in tone than that of
Camille, and to which Marat was often a contributor.
In fact, Freron's whole style of writing reflects that
of the author of the " Ami du Peuple," and Marat
refers to the young man in his letters as his " dear
lieutenant."

Freron was a more deliberately pitiless, possibly a
more consistent Revolutionary, than Camille. His
writings are quite as inflammatory, but strike one as
more cold-blooded, lacking as they do the charm and
grace of style of those of his collaborator.

This " Lapin " Freron, as he was called by his
friends, was indeed a curious, contradictory character.
His activities were by no means confined to journalism.
Later he was to distinguish himself, and that not
altogether enviably, as a deputy from the Convention
on mission to Toulon. He was one of those who carried
the Terror into the Southern provinces of France, and,
in the name of Liberty, filled Toulon and Marseilles
with smoking ruins and desolated homes.

History has written down Freron as cruel and
bloodthirsty ; one of the mildest names applied to
him is that of " singe-tigre " ; yet his friends loved
him. He was one of that little irresponsible band of
intimates whom we shall see soon at Bourg-la-Reine,
laughing and playing together through Camille's long
honeymoon. He has left to us the most charming
and touching portrait of Lucile Desmoulins which it
is possible to imagine, in a letter to her husband, from
which we shall have occasion to quote later.

That is the other side of Stanislas Freron — the side
with which history does not reckon.

Some of the best numbers of the " Revolutions de

THE WEST WIND 113

France " were those which Camille wrote at about
this time. In Nos. 34-36 he describes in vivid
and picturesque language the Festival of the Federa-
tion in the Champ-de-Mars. This fete, held on July
14th, was in celebration of the first anniversary of the
taking of the Bastille, and it was perhaps the only
occasion on which the dreams of the ardent Revolu-
tionists seemed really about to be realised in a kind of
transport of universal brotherhood.

Paris and provincial France were to hold festival
around the vast altar of the country in the Champ-de-
Mars. Thousands of representatives assembled from
all parts of the country. An army of workmen was
busied in preparing the arena to seat this huge con-
course, with its banked tiers of seats, but at the last
moment it was found that even this army was in-
sufficient for the labour in hand.

But the work must be done somehow — let the citizens
of Paris complete it. A kind of frenzy of enthusiasm
seized upon the people. High and low, rich and poor,
all hastened to the Champ-de-Mars until the great
plain looked like an anthill.

The work went forward merrily ; the many hands
did indeed make it light. In that lovely summer
weather the toil was turned into a kind of picnic, an
occasion for rejoicing and merriment. Deputies,
nobles, fishwives and actresses all mingled together
with priests and students from the Colleges. Youth-
ful, ascetic Saint-Just jostled Madame du Barry with
her wheelbarrow — or so Camille tells us ; we may
believe in that dramatic incident or not as we please.

One hundred and fifty thousand volunteers working
together with hearts and hands ; it was all very
charming, very French, and immensely appealing to
Camille, as we gather from his glowing description
of this " stage ballet " — the " Reunion of the Orders,"
as he calls it.

After all the festival itself was something of an anti-

114 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

climax to the time o£ preparation. The weather was
terribly bad on the great day, and it went near to
spoiling the whole affair.

Camille tells us how numbers of people passed the
night on the Champ-de-Mars, how numbers more
hastened there at daybreak.

But the wind was icy cold and the rain fell in sheets ;
it spoke well for the good humour of that vast crowd
that their spirits were not entirely damped. The
resplendent procession of King, Deputies, Churchmen
and Nobles, with the eighty-three white banners of
the Departments, the flags of the Districts, and the
Oriflamme itself filed into the Champ-de-Mars in a
downpour ; most of the ceremonies were gone through
under pelting rain. But the people danced and
laughed and sang, and when at about three o'clock
the weather cleared, all discomforts were forgotten
in spite of damp clothes and ruined decorations.

Probably Camille himself joined in the procession
as one of the National volunteers who formed a guard
of honour ; we know that many journalists were
amongst them. Possibly he was one of those who
received the brass medal representing the Bastille,
worn on a tricolour ribbon as a military order, which
was presented by the Municipality to all those who
had assisted at the taking of the fortress.

Certainly he was present at the Festival ; certainly
he has described it for his contemporaries and for us
in the most glowing and enthusiastic language.

Yet he has one complaint to make, and that is of
the King himself. He demands why " Capet the
Elder " did not leave his throne in the Champ-de-
Mars empty, to represent that the sovereignty rested
with the people. In fact all through his numbers at
this time Camille shows scant reverence for Louis, or
for Royalty in general.

He tells us afterwards of the rejoicings and merry-
makings in the Champs-Elysees and on the site of the

THE WEST WIND 115

Bastille, transformed into a forest of " trees of
liberty " surmounted by Phrygian caps.

Camille also mentions Danton in a curious and
characteristic anecdote. The Cordeliers had held a
banquet of their own in celebration of the Federation,
and on this occasion Danton, already the leading
spirit of this body, refused to drink any of the official
toasts, save that to the health of the Fatherland.

It is in one of these numbers which describe the
July festivals so joyfully that Camille first shows
that he is beginning to feel doubts as to his own
position. He had gone rather too far, rather too
often. Malouet, over-powerful to be disregarded, was
preparing to denounce the rash journalist in the
National Assembly. In Number 34 of the " Revolu-
tions " Camille expresses his misgivings.

" I begin to doubt whether I ought to sharpen so many
daggers against myself, in order to enlighten ungrateful
federals, who proposed at the Palais Royal, in my own hearing,
that I should be hanged. I begin to doubt whether a journalist
who has not been placed on guard by the people, but is a self-
constituted sentinel, is obliged by his conscience to lead the
wandering and underground life of M. Marat, It is all very
well to jump into the gulf like Curtius when one believes that
one's death will save one's country."

In a letter to his father at about this period Camille
writes in much the same strain of the dangers which
surrounded him and which, he says, menace him
daily, but he ends on a more heroic note.

" Many men sell their lives to kings for five sous," he says.
" Shall I then do nothing for the love of my country, of truth,
of justice ? I apply to myself that verse which Achilles says
to a soldier in Homer : ' And Patrocles, he also is dead, who
was worth more than I ! ' "

The list of disputes and lawsuits in which Camille
involved himself at this time was endless. This was
natural enough in the case of a journalist who wrote

ii6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

openly that, in his opinion : " There is an excess of
good sense and of wisdom which one ought to avoid."

His accusations of bribery and corruption against
men in high places could not be suffered to pass
unnoticed, and Crillon, Antoine Talon and Bergasse
each in their turn demanded reparation from the over-
bold journalist. It must be confessed that they rarely
obtained any particular satisfaction; at the worst Camille
was condemned at the Chatelet by default, a sentence
which did not trouble him over-much, we may imagine.

The Royalist journals also continued to attack him
furiously, and with all the more spite and venom
because their writers so seldom scored a hit against
Camille, the agile and adroit.

It was on the last day of July that Victor Malouet,
in an impassioned speech, denounced Camille before
the National Assembly. He was listened to with
attention, for Malouet was respected as an honest
man and a good constitutional Royalist. He protested
that the cruellest enemies of the Constitution were
those who wrote and spoke with a view to making the
King and Royalty itself an object of contempt and
scandal, who seized on the occasion of a great festival,
at which the King had received unanimous testi-
monies of love and loyalty, to speak of the insolence
of the throne, of the slight to the people.

In support of his words, Malouet then read a passage
from Camille's paper, where the journalist spoke of
the triumph of Paulus Emilius as a National Festival,
because a king, in deep humiliation, followed the
triumphal car with bound hands.

" It is not," the orator protested, " that I wish to avenge a
private injury. After a whole year of silence and contempt, I
come here as the avenger of a public crime."

Notwithstanding Malouet's asseverations of disin-
terestedness, it is very plain, on reading the text of
his " Complaint " against Camille addressed to the

THE WEST WIND 117

Criminal Lieutenant of the Chatelet of Paris, that he
had personal as well as public injuries to avenge.

We find it stated here that : " the life of the
complainant has been in danger. Pursued at Ver-
sailles, insulted at the door of the Assembly, over-
whelmed with anonymous letters, reduced to carry
firearms with which to defend himself, the com-
plainant attributes all this to Camille Desmoulins."

Malouet further adds that he judges from the
violence of his writing, especially in No. 31 of the
" Revolutions," that Camille is mad. He begs that
the journalist may be seen and examined by the Physi-
cian to the Chatelet and taken to any madhouse which
may be decided upon, as a violent and dangerous lunatic.

Malouet carried his point to the extent that the
advocate to the Chatelet was instructed to prosecute
such writings as Camille's, on the plea that it was
treason against the nation on the part of authors,
printers and hawkers to publish or aid to distribute
anything which might be calculated to, in any way,
incite the people to insurrection.

Two days afterwards, however, on August 2nd, an
address in defence of Camille and written by himself
was read in the Assembly. In this he complained
that the treasonable number of his journal had not
been publicly read by his accuser.

Camille was present, as he tells us, on this occasion,
in his very best ruffled shirt, in order that he might
make a good impression if he was forced to appear
at the bar of the Assembly. When Malouet challenged
the journalist to speak for himself, in his own defence,
he did so, rather unexpectedly. But Camille vi^as no
more eloquent than usual on this occasion, and he
was soon howled down.

It would probably have gone hardly with him, and
he expected, as he says, that he would most certainly
have been arrested had it not been for the interven-
tion of " my dear Robespierre."

ii8 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Camille himself describes his escape in light and
jeering fashion, although there is little doubt that,
at the time, he fully realised his danger, and did not
look upon it as hy any means a joke.

" It was half-past eleven," he says. " Mirabeau-Tonneau
was tormented with the wish to moisten his dry gullet, and I
was indebted for the silence which Camus obtained less to the
president's bell than to the official bell which called the
aristocrats and the ministerialists to supper. They at once
abandoned the field of battle ; I was led out in triumph ; and
scarcely had I tasted a little repose before a chorus of patriotic
news-vendors came to arouse me with the sound of my own
name, and cried under my windows : ' Great Confusion of
Malouet ! Great Victory of Camille Desmoulins ! ' "

As a matter of fact the result of the whole affair was
that, on Petion's motion supported by Alexandre de
Lameth, the Assembly decreed that there should be
no prosecution for anything published up to that
time. The only work excepted from this amnesty
was Marat's pamphlet, " C'en est fait de nous."

It is said that a National Guard, on hearing of
Camille's acquittal, proclaimed that if he met the
journalist he would cut open his head with his sword.
Camille's comment is characteristic. " That man," he
remarks in his journal, " evidently does not like a joke."

Camille certainly was lucky in escaping with a whole
skin on this and other occasions.

He received, in common with most of the other
leading Revolutionaries, constant challenges from the
fiery Uttle band of Royalists, whom their opponents
styled " assassinateurs " or " spadassinicides."

These men, fine swordsmen all, associated them-
selves together with the avowed aim of provoking
duels with the popular leaders, and by this means, if
possible, abruptly terminating their careers. These
Royalist champions were, as a rule, noblemen, accus-
tomed since boyhood to the use of the sword. The
men whom they tried to drive by insults and open

THE WEST WIND 119

challenges to fight, were commonly, like Camille, of
the bourgeois class and consequently quite unused
to the " gentlemanly " method of settling disputes, a
fact which, no doubt, encouraged their opponents to
expect an easy task.

But the Court gentlemen did not reckon on the fact
that these adversaries of theirs were totally devoid
of what they considered honourable feelings. These
lawyers and journalists of the Third Estate thought it
no disgrace to refuse to fight, in spite of insults, and
consequently the tactics of the " assassinateurs " were
as a rule, unsuccessful.

As to Camille's own attitude with regard to the
matter, we are able to give it expression in words
which he is reported, on good authority, to have used.
In No. 42 of the " Revolutions de France," the
journalist very grossly insulted a Royalist actor, one
Dessessarts, a good-natured, harmless fellow enough.
He was exceedingly stout, and, apropos of this, Camille
utilised a cruel story, which might well stick to its
victim, making him ridiculous for the rest of his life.
The actor was very naturally enraged, and, happen-
ing to encounter Camille a few days later, at the Swiss
Restaurant in the Luxembourg, promptly challenged
him to a duel. It must be confessed that it is only in
his answer to Dessessarts that Camille appears to any
advantage in this affair. He absolutely refused to
fight, saying : —

" It will be by continuing to harass the Black party and the
ministerialists that I shall revenge myself. I might pass my
whole Hfe at the Bois de Boulogne, if I were obliged to give
satisfaction to everybody who takes offence at my plain-
speaking. Let them accuse me of cowardice if they like.
Have patience — I fear the time is not far off when we shall have
opportunities of dying more usefully and gloriously."

In the autumn of 1790 Camille's greatest friend and
rival amongst contemporary journalists, Loustalot,

120 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

editor of the " Revolutions de Paris," died suddenly,
it is said of grief at the news of the massacre of the
Swiss Guards at Nancy.

There is an earnestness and a sense of conviction
in this man's writings for which we seek in vain in the
most part of Camille's earlier work. Loustalot, as a
journalist, took himself and his readers very seriously.
As Eugene Despois says, comparing the two men: " To
appreciate Loustalot, it is sufficient to be a patriot, to
know how to read and to have good sense ; these condi-
tions alone do not enable one to enjoy Desmoulins."

Loustalot's good faith and honesty were undoubted ;
his popularity was immense, and it is said that before
his early death he could count on two hundred
thousand readers. Camille, with that frank generosity
which he always displayed towards the writers of his
party, said that he " was the journalist who has best
served the Republic."

It is certain that Loustalot was one of the best and
purest type of Revolutionary, free from the stigma of
inciting to bloodshed, although his bitterness could
lead Saint-Jean-d'Angely to say, on hearing of his
death : " Ah, then, he has sucked his own pen."

It was Camille who delivered the funeral oration of
the dead journalist at the Jacobin Club, where his obse-
quies were celebrated for three days. On this occasion
he seems to have spoken, for once, effectively and well.

" Loustalot," he said, " always despised the enemies who
tried to defame him. He could not understand the baseness
of those journalists who, instead of calling men to liberty and
equality, do not hesitate to serve the aristocrats, whom they
despise, for the sake of a Httle money, and defame those
writers whom they cannot but esteem, in order to please their
masters. Such men as these debase liberation and talent to
the level of domestic servitude."

In justice to Camille, it must be said that, like
Loustalot, he was not one of " such men as these."

Ill

IN spite of lawsuits and Royalist challenges this
winter of 1790 and the year which followed
was by far the happiest period of Camille's life.
He had certainly made plenty of enemies,
but, nevertheless, he was successful, praised and
flattered. Moreover, though not by any means rich,
he was in more comfortable circumstances than he
had ever been before. Above all, it was in December
of this year that Camille at last gained the desire of his
heart.

The wind was to blow softly from the west for a
short time at least, and the weather-cock turned at
the gentle touch. It did not last very long, this
happiness of Camille's, but for those few months he
felt, and constantly repeated, that there was nothing
left on earth for him to desire.

We have seen the gradual growth of the love
between Camille Desmoulins and Lucile Duplessis.
It was no sudden, transitory passion, but something
which had taken long to arrive at perfection, which had
been at once a torment and an ecstasy, at least as far
as the man was concerned.

Camille had watched Lucile grow from a beautiful
child into a still more beautiful girl — watched her,
scarcely daring to hope that some day he might win her
for his own.

Now she was twenty years old, a woman with a
woman's mind and will, in spite of her fragile and
childish appearance. As to her loveliness there is no un-
certainty. All the writers of that day who mention

121

122 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Lucile Desmoulins speak of her beauty with enthusi-
asm. Jules Claretie, who had himself heard her
appearance described hy eye-witnesses, says that " she
was of small stature, and very graceful, with beautiful
fair hair, like a portrait by Greuze."

A contemporary writer, one Moreau de Jonnes, tells
us also that " she was an adorable little blonde,"
but it appears that although her hair and complexion
were strikingly fair, Lucile had dark eyes. Her own
mother said of her that " her eyes were not blue, but
black, like her father's."

Yet, on the whole, perhaps one likes Camille's own
half-shy compliment to his wife the best of all. He
was asked by Mademoiselle Ste. Amaranthe, herself
acknowledged to be one of the most lovely women of
her day, whether Lucile were not very pretty. " Made-
V moiselle," he is said to have answered, " she would be

^^v beautiful even by the side of you."

Probably Lucile Desmoulins' best-known portrait
is that by Boilly in the Musee Carnavelet. This, and
other existing pictures, certainly represent her as
charmingly pretty, but, judging only by these, one
might imagine that Camille's wife was of the wax-
doll type in body and mind. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Lucile proved again and again
that she possessed character, and character of a very
distinct and definite quality. We have already seen
something of what she was as a wilful, charming girl,
indulged by her parents and full of immature dreams
and fancies. Under the strain and stress of her bitter-
sweet married life, Lucile was to develop quickly.
There was a strong soul and a brave spirit in that
dainty Dresden-china girl, who, at first sight, would
seem to need a landscape by Watteau as her fittest
frame.

Camille had waited full seven years for his Rachel :
at last his patience was to be rewarded.

Very gradually M. Duplessis' opinions had changed,

THE WEST WIND 123

or rather they had been modified. Perhaps the
fidehty of the young man touched him ; more probably
Camille's ever-growing popularity was not without its
effect.

At the outset of the Revolution, in spite of his
sudden leap into fame, the journalist had been in a
minority and, as such, was no desirable son-in-law for
an honest, respectable burgess, however broad-minded
and liberal of view. But during this year of 1790
things had altered. Camille had been the editor of a
thriving journal for twelve months. Moreover, the
Revolution had become, in a measure, fashionable ; it
was the correct thing nowadays to be rather advanced,
to wear brooches and breast-pins made from the stones
of the Bastille, and to talk of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity with large capitals. Why, the King
himself had taken the oath upon the altar of the
Fatherland in the Champ-de-Mars, and at present
men had no reason to doubt that he intended to
keep it faithfully.

M. Duplessis began to think that perhaps Camille
Desmoulins, this firebrand of a politician, might not be
so objectionable a connection after all. It would be
rather pleasant to be related to a man who was spoken
of as the most rising journalist of the day, now that
Loustalot was dead.

As to Madame Duplessis, we may be quite sure that
she did all in her power to further the match. Her
sympathy had always been with the lovers.

And Lucile ? Her feelings are plainly revealed in a
letter written by her to Camille, but never sent to its
destination. It is published by M. Claretie, and one
cannot resist quoting from it, although it seems almost
sacrilege to do so. Yet nothing else can show us so
plainly the limitless love which filled the girl's heart.

" Oh, thou who art in the depth of my being, thou whom
I dare not love, or rather whom I dare not say that I love ;
thou believest me insensible ! Oh, cruel one, dost thou judge

124 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

me after thine own heart ? And could that heart attach
itself to a being without feeling ? Ah, well, yes — it is better
that I suffer, it is better that you should forget me. Oh, God,
judge by that of my courage, which of us two has the most to
suffer ; I dare not confess to myself what I feel for thee ; I
strive only to hide it from my own knowledge. Thou sufferest,
sayest thou ? Oh, I suffer more ; thine image is incessantly
present to my mind ; it never quits me. I look for thy faults ;
I find them and I love them. Tell me then, why does all this
strife exist ? Why do I love to make a mystery of it even to
my mother ? I wish that she should know it, that she should
divine it, but I would not tell it to her myself."

So it came to pass that on December nth, 1790, M.
Duplessis at last gave his consent to the betrothal.
Camille could not believe in his good fortune ; he had
scarcely dared to hope that this joy would ever be his.
His own tender words will best describe that first
interview with Lucile as her affianced husband. It is
a letter written to his father on the same day which
contains the passage : —

"To-day, the eleventh of December, you see me at last
at the summit of my desires. My happiness has lingered for
long, but at last it has come and I am as happy as one can
possibly be on earth. That charming Lucile, of whom I have
so often spoken to you and whom I have loved for eight years,
has at last been given to me by her parents, and she herself
does not refuse me.

" Just now her mother came to tell me the news, weeping
with joy : the inequality of fortune, for M, Duplessis has an
income of 20,000 livres a year, has so far delayed our happiness ;
her father was tempted by the offers that were made to him.
He dismissed a suitor who came with 100,000 francs ; Lucile,
who had already refused 25,000 livres, had no difficulty in
rejecting him. You will understand her character by this
single trait.

" Directly after her mother had given her to me, she led
me to her chamber ; I threw myself at Lucile's feet. Surprised
to hear her laugh I lifted my eyes ; hers were in no better a
state than mine. She was all in tears ; she wept abundantly,
although she laughed at the same time. Never have I seen

THE WEST WIND 125

such a charming sight, and I could not have imagined that
nature and sensibiHty could join these two contrasting feelings
in such a way."

Camille goes on to tell his father with distinct pride
that Lucile will bring him a dowry of 100,000 francs,
and. that M. Duplessis also intends to bestow half of
his plate upon the young couple, to the value of
10,000 francs.

In this same letter Camille announces that he
wishes to be married in eight days' time, and implores
his father to send his consent at once, by return of
post. As M. Desmoulins did not reply immediatel)^
the young man writes again in feverish impatience
on the 1 8th and 20th of the month, reminding his
father that he is counting the minutes until his
marriage can take place.

And, after all, the delay was entirely Camille's own
fault. In his hurry and excitement he had forgotten
to send his father Lucile's full name and that of her
father and mother, all of which was necessary in order
that M. Duplessis' consent might be made out in
the proper legal form.

However, it was all put right, at the cost of a little
delay. M. and Madame Desmoulins were overjoyed
at the happiness of their son, and sent affectionate
messages to Lucile and her parents, together with their
formal consent.

Nevertheless, all the obstacles in Camille's path were
not yet overcome. The date of the wedding had been
fixed for December 29th, but it is a proof of how
strong religious feeling yet was in France that, since
the season was Advent, it was necessary to procure a
dispensation before the ceremony could take place.
Camille was not in high favour with the Church, as
may be imagined, and it was only through the
intervention of the Abbe Berardier, his old school-
master, that this dispensation was at last forthcoming.

It was the wish of Berardier, moreover, to marry

126 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

this favourite pupil of his, and M. de Pancemont,
cure of St. Sulpice, was persuaded to allow this, and
himself only to assist on the occasion. But this same
M. de Pancemont was determined to have his own
way in other respects. Free-thinking, free-speaking
Camille was, in a measure, at his mercy, and the priest
positively refused to allow the wedding to take place
unless the journalist made a public profession of faith
in the Catholic religion.

This M. de Pancemont could not obtain in so many
words ; he was obliged to be content with Camille's
rather hesitating answer to his assertion that, if he
were not a Catholic, he could not confer upon him a
sacrament of that religion.

" Well, then, yes," said Camille, " if that be the
case, I am a Catholic."

Two further concessions the priest did obtain,
after subjecting the journalist to a catechism which
that young gentleman managed to wriggle through,
although scarcely with flying colours. He made
Camille promise to retract his heretical opinions in
the next number of his paper — a promise which, by
the way, the journalist never performed. M. de
Pancement also exacted that the young man should
make his confession before the wedding ceremony,
and we know from the testimony of Madame Duplessis
herself that in this respect Camille kept his word.

Writing some years afterwards, Lucile's mother
said : —

" It was I who drove Camille and Lucile in my carriage, a
few days before their marriage, to the Cordeliers, where a
Father confessed them, one after the other — first of all
Camille, and then Lucile, who awaited her turn at the other
side of the Confessional, They confessed with such confidence
and ingenuousness that I could hear everything."

And so, the way being plain and all obstacles
removed, Camille and Lucile were married on Decem-
ber 29th at the Church of St. Sulpice,

THE WEST WIND 127

It must have pleased the bridegroom's boyish
vanity to see how the citizens of Paris crowded round
the doors of the church to watch the wedding pro-
cession of their favourite writer. It was what we
should call now a fashionable ceremony. One can
imagine how the people nudged each other and then
broke into cheers when they saw such famous guests as
Sillery, Mercier, Jerome Petion, Brissot de Warville
and, above all, Maximilian Robespierre enter the
church.

It is easy to picture Camille, hastening to meet his
bride, his queer, ugly face radiant and transfigured
with happiness, wearing " a white waistcoat, worked
with flowers."

As to Lucile, one can almost feel the stir of admira-
tion which moved the crowd, as she passed up the
aisle on her father's arm, dressed in her wedding veil,
and a pink satin dress, with narrow sleeves and little
basques. That wedding dress and Camille's gorgeous
waistcoat are still preserved, as M. Lenotre tells us, at
Laon, together with a silk garter worn by Lucile on
this, the greatest day of her life, and embroidered
with forget-me-nots and joined hands, surrounding
the motto : " Unisson-nous-pour-la-vie."

Emotional Camille was very deeply moved by the
marriage service. He writes to his father : —

" Berardier pronounced before the celebration a touching
discourse, which made us both weep, Lucile and I. We were
not the only ones to be affected ; everybody around us had tears
in their eyes."

" Cry, if you want to cry," Robespierre is said to
have whispered at sight of these tears of Camille's,
as he and Mercier stood holding the canopy over the
bridal pair.

After the ceremony was over the whole party made
their way along the Rue de Conde to Camille's
apartments, on the third floor of No. i Rue de

128 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Theatre Frangais, where the wedding breakfast was
prepared.

Eleven persons were gathered about that large
round mahogany table, which still exists, a silent
witness of what must have been a merry, innocent
festivity enough. Besides Camille and Lucile and
M. and Madame Duplessis, Lucile's sister Adele,
whom at this time Robespierre is said to have admired,
was present, together with Robespierre himself,
Berardier, Mercier, Petion, Sillery and Brissot.

Probably the occasion passed in much the same
fashion as other wedding breakfasts before and since.
Doubtless there were speeches from one and another ;
we can fancy Camille, more or less incoherent, his
stammer very marked in his nervous excitement.
We can also imagine that Robespierre, the principal
guest, proposed the health of the bride and bride-
groom in careful, well-chosen language.

On the face of it, all was very peaceful, very pleasant
— very ordinary, in short — but under the light comedy
of Camille's wedding there lies a deep vein of tragedy.
It is only necessary to read through the names of
the witnesses to the ceremony, one by one, names well
known then, and since underlined deeply on the pages
of history. It is said that the worthy vicar of St.
Sulpice, Gueudeville, was terror-struck at the sight
of these signatures, already so famous, or infamous.

After the names of Camille, Lucile, and M. and
Madame Duplessis, comes that of Jerome Petion —
handsome, honest, conceited, rather stupid Petion,
most popular of popular idols, soon to be Mayor of
Paris, soon to think himself admired by Elizabeth of
France herself.

Petion was now one of the most advanced of
Revolutionaries, but in a few short years he will be
considered a reactionary ; as a Girondin he will be
hunted through France, never so worthy of admiration
as in his brave, simple cheerfulness during that terrible

THE WEST WIND 129

flight. He was destined to lie at last, starved and worn-
out, amongst the stubble of a corn-field, his body-
torn and devoured hy the dogs of the village — and he
was to owe that death in some measure to Camille
Desmoulins, once his friend.

The next important signature is written in a neat,
careful hand. It is that of Maximilian-Marie-Isidore
Robespierre. Camille considered, and with reason,
that he owed much to " my dear Robespierre." Had
not the great Maximilian saved him when the rash
journalist was almost undone hy Malouet's eloquence,
only a few months before ? Many of the numbers of
Camille's paper at this time were directly inspired by
Robespierre ; as far as was compatible with their
respective natures, they were intimate friends.

Camille was to be indebted to Robespierre in a far
different sense some three years later. He was to owe
to that same dear friend his arrest, and his death.

Following Robespierre's name comes that of
Mercier, one of the few amongst the signatories who
was to outlive the Revolution, and to write later his
recollections of those days.

And here is the signature of Brissot, Jean Brissot de
Warville, deputy to the National Assembly. Brissot
was one of the foremost journalists of the day. His
paper, the " Patriote Frangais," was at the same time
the bitterest and the most unswerving in its steady,
cold patriotism. He was a Republican almost as soon
as Camille himself, and only less daring than the
younger man in the expression of his views.

Yet, not much more than two years later, Brissot
and his party were to be the victims of the worst act of
Camille's life. He was to send the man who had been
his intimate friend to death, by means of a scurrilous
pamphlet, and to realise, too late, that it was he,
Camille, who had killed Brissot, and with him the men
who might have saved France from the anarchy which
followed.

I30 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Read by the light o£ later events, it is a tragic
document, this marriage contract between Lucie-
Simplice-Camille-Benoist Desmoulins, journalist and
man of letters, aged thirty, and Anne-Lucile-Philippe-
Laridon Duplessis, aged twenty.

But at present Camille's happiness was unclouded.
He writes to his father on January 3rd a letter full of
joyous pride.

" All agree," he says, " in admiring my wife, as
perfectly beautiful, and I assure you that this beauty
is her least merit."

Finally he signs himself : " Votre fils, Camille
Desmoulins, le plus heureux des hommes, et qui ne
desire plus rien au monde."

Camille and Lucile spent their honeymoon at
Bourg-la-Reine. Madame Duplessis had a small
property there, a little farm-house called Clos-Payen,
situated on the right-hand side of the road from Paris,
just at the entrance to the village.

M. Lenotre sought out the house in recent years,
and describes it to us as it is now, and as it was in those
days when Camille brought thither his young bride.

It is a picturesque old farm, such as are common
throughout France. The courtyard, round which the
buildings cluster, is entered through a gateway, whose
door-posts are surmounted by large stone balls. In
this courtyard is an old well, shaded by a walnut tree.

The house possessed a large garden, shaded by trees,
and bordered by a double row of lindens, and in the
northernmost corner of the estate, connected with
the main building by a foot-path, was a little stone
cottage, which had been built especially for Camille
and Lucile. This tiny house was given to them by
Madame Duplessis, and here they spent not only their
honeymoon, but also days and even weeks together
during the next eighteen months.

Here I^ucile held a kind of little salon, of a sort
peculiar to herself ; here the two lived the simple life,

THE WEST WIND 131

as we should call it now, in the style of Rousseau and
Bernardin de St. Pierre. A small circle of friends
visited Bourg-la-Reine from time to time, most of
them young and probably all the more joyous and
irresponsible because they had escaped from Paris for
a time, from Paris, which was now so grim, so deadly
in earnest.

Madame Duplessis spent much time with her
daughter and son-in-law, and Camille always speaks of
her with the greatest affection — their dear " Daronne "
or " Melpomene," as the coterie at Bourg-la-Reine
called her.

They all had nicknames ; it was part of the game
which they loved to play when they were together.
Lucile was turn by turn " The indefinable being,"
"Lolotte," "Loup," "Rouleau," or "the Cachan
Hen," names meaningless enough to us, who can only
guess at their associations, and the little intimate
stories connected with them.

Camille himself was " Bouli-Boula," " loup-loup,"
or, more usually, " M. Hon " in allusion to his
stammer. Amongst their other friends, Brune, after-
wards Marshal of France under the Empire, was
" Paragon," Duplain " Saturn," and Stanislas Freron,
Camille's sub-editor, was " Lapin."

It was Freron who, of all the little circle, was most
intimate with his young host and hostess. In common
with most of the men who knew her, he almost
idolised pretty Lucile ; perhaps he loved her better
than he or she knew.

It is from a letter written by him at Toulon later,
when Camille was demanding the " Committee
of Clemency," that we gain the best idea of
that charming, idyllic life at Bourg-la-Reine. Freron
has been warning Camille against letting his imagina-
tion run away with him, his philanthropy blind him —
this Committee of his would be a triumph for the
anti-revolutionaries. Then the writer pauses and lets

132 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

his memory stray back to Bourg-la-Reine, and to the
old happy days which he had spent there.

He recalls : " the thyme and wild herbs with which
Madame Desmoulins' pretty dimpled hands had fed
him." He lingers tenderly over a charming picture of
Lucile : " trotting about in her room, gliding over
the polished floor, sitting for a moment at her piano,
and whole hours in an easy chair, dreaming, giving the
reins to her imagination, then making the coffee with
a filtering bag, behaving like a sprite, and showing her
teeth like a cat."

This letter, in a few words, brings Lucile before us,
as no amount of elaborate description could do, with
all her inconsequent charm.

Amidst the misery and turmoil of Toulon under the
rule of the Terror, a rule for which he himself was
responsible, it is strange and incongruous to read how
Freron's thoughts turned to his low-ceiled bedroom
at Bourg-la-Reine, where the tired journalist rested
after his week of drudgery in Paris. We see, in the
glass of Freron's memory, Camille's happy face as he
leans in over the window-sill, mocking at his friend's
slothfulness, we catch the echo of Lucile's favourite
phrase : " What does that matter to me ? It's as
clear as day."

So the happy innocent days sped by ; days which
developed all that was best in Camille's nature. As
Chateaubriand said : " A young and charming woman
in awakening Desmoulins' heart to love, made him
capable of virtue and sacrifice."

Little Camille cared that his admirers in Paris were
openly disappointed in their favourite journalist.
They missed his gay raillery, his bitter jests : a
versifier wrote to him, parodying the warning sent to
Brutus : " Tu dors, Camille, et Paris est esclave."

Camille was troubled by none of these things. He
was happy, and, that being so, he had forgotten for
the moment to be cruel even in jest. It was at this

THE WEST WIND 133

time, early in 1791, that he declared his belief that the
end of the Revolution was at hand. He publicly
announced his intention of giving up journalism
and resuming his work at the Bar, so that he might
live quietly with Lucile — " to make a good husband,"
as he quaintly expressed it. This was one of those
resolutions which are only made to be broken.

Once a writer, always a writer, at least as far as
Camille was concerned. He could not so lightly
abandon that which was his very life.

After a honeymoon which, we may be sure, seemed
only too brief to both of them, Lucile and Camille
returned to Paris, to play at housekeeping in their
own little home in the Rue de Theatre Fran9ais.
Here they had for neighbours, on the second floor of
No. 22 Rue de Conde, the Duplessis family, and for
housemates on the second floor of their own building,
M. and Madame Danton.

Hitherto Danton has not appeared in any very
intimate connection with Camille, and it is rather
difficult to say precisely when their real friendship
began. Considerably later, in a letter of April 3rd,
1792, Camille mentions Danton to his father as " an
old college comrade, who, while hating his (Camille's)
opinions, does not extend his hatred to the man
himself."

It is true that Carlyle draws on his imagination
to the extent of making Danton and Camille appear
as intimate friends at such an early date as the opening
of the States-General in 1789. But although his
description of the two men, who, it will be remem-
bered, he represents as watching the procession
together, is dramatic and striking, it is very certain
that he had little or no authority for so connecting
them.

It seems probable that Camille and Danton were
acquaintances very likely from their college days, but
that they did not become in any sense friends until

134 CAA4ILLE DESMOULINS

they were living in the same house and, therefore,
naturally thrown together to a much greater extent.

Be that as it may, from the beginning of 1791
onwards there can be no doubt that Danton exercised
a very great influence over Camille. Michelet
has even gone so far as to describe the younger
man as " a flower which grew upon Danton." It was
the natural influence of a strong nature over one
which was essentially weak in fibre. Camille, in spite
of the boldness and originality of his pen, was, through-
out his career, always more or less under the ascendancy
of others. At first it was Mirabeau whose personality
dominated the young man, later Danton's influence
succeeded to that of his great prototype. Always, up
to nearly the end, Camille accepted the guidance of
Robespierre, that man of unswerving principles and
cut-and-dried rules of conduct, who used the brilliant
journalist as his catspaw, and finally, like the moral
coward that he was, left Camille to his fate, rather
than betray, possibly to his own undoing, his sympathy
with the policy which inspired the " Vieux Cordelier."

Camille had one trouble in these early days of his
married life which resulted directly from his great
happiness. We have seen how from the time of his
first entry into journalism, the young man found
himself engaged in an incessant warfare with his rivals
of the opposite camp of thought, a warfare in which
the advantage of skill decidedly rested with Camille.

This very fact only served to make his adversaries
the more bitter and vindictive, and the marriage of
the Republican journalist was made by them the
occasion for a fresh outburst of calumnies, directed
this time not so much against Camille himself as
against his wife.

It was a vile weapon, this which the Royalist
writers used, but one unfortunately very typical of the
newspaper warfare of that time. It is impossible to
tell who invented the abominable scandal, but certain

THE WEST WIND 135

it is that journal after journal repeated with variations
more or less discreditable that Lucile Desmoulins was
the illegitimate daughter of the Abbe Terray. Even
worse things were hinted at, but these one need not
mention here.

Of course, the lie was absolutely unfounded.
Camille, in the letter to his father on January 3rd,
stigmatises it as " utter nonsense," and careful research
only serves to verify the truth of this assertion. But,
nevertheless, it is plain that the young husband was
deeply wounded when the libel was reprinted again
and again, by the " Journal de la Cour et de la Ville,"
by Peltier in the " Actes des Apotres," by Retif de la
Bretonne and others. Indeed, Camille wished to
institute proceedings against the " Journal de la Cour
et de la Ville," but, as he tells his father, the Duplessis
persuaded him to treat such shameless falsehoods with
contempt. " This respectable family," he says, " only
laugh at the calumnies of these infamous aristocrats,
and have counselled me to despise them."

Camille could indeed afford to do so. The love
between himself and his wife was too deep-rooted and
sacred a thing to be affected by such spiteful breezes
as these.

IV

THE first six months of 1791 were not only
peaceful and undisturbed as far as Camille's
private life was concerned, it was also a
more or less uneventful period for Paris
and for the whole of France.

The Assembly and the people in general had not yet
lost trust in the King ; the rude awakening of the
flight to Varennes was still to come. They believed
more or less in Louis' personal good faith, if not in
that of the Queen and his other advisers. Those who
were optimistically inclined began to believe that a
system of government might indeed be established on
somewhat the same lines as the English constitution.

The Republican party kept quiet, at least in public ;
they really had no opportunity to do otherwise. True,
there were some few journalists, amongst whom
Camille was prominent, who still voiced their opinions
loudly, but even he is distinctly milder during this
period.

Meanwhile the Royalists were working silently, but
deliberately. They made their plans and only waited
for an opportunity to carry them into practice. There
is not a particle of evidence to show that the King
ever intended to keep faith with the Assembly and the
people. Later investigations go rather to prove that,
all this time, whilst outwardly conforming to the
constitution, he was intriguing with the Austrian
Emperor and the " emigres."

The Court sought right and left for members of
the popular party whom they might corrupt and bring

136

THE WEST WIND 137

over to their side. They found a mighty tool to their
hand in Mirabeau.

There is no doubt that for some months before his
death the great Tribune was the paid servant of the
King and Queen, using all his vast powers for their
interests. Yet it is scarcely fair to say that his principles
were corrupted. Mirabeau was never anything but a
monarchist in theory and in speech. He never wished
that the King might be dethroned ; he required only
that he should reign constitutionally.

This being so, it was not an act of treason in
Mirabeau to use his best endeavours to prop up the
falling monarchy. Of course, it would be useless to
pretend that his personal ambitions were not involved.
He longed to be all-powerful himself, but as a prime
minister, not as a Cromwell.

The leaders of the advanced party made no allow-
ances. Mirabeau had been their idol, their greatest
orator, their strongest support. Now he had failed
them ; he spoke and worked, almost openly, on the
side of the Court. They called him " Traitor " in no
uncertain terms. The newsboys cried in the streets,
outside the very hall of the Assembly, of the " Great
treason of Mirabeau," their sheets were thrust in his
face when he left the sessions, he was hissed as often
as he was applauded when he rose to speak.

It was on February 28th that Mirabeau made his
last great bid for popularity, and with partial success.
That afternoon in the Assembly, during a debate on
the question of the " emigres," he vehemently
opposed the proposal to make any laws against emigra-
tion. This was the opportunity for which the " Left "
or extremists had waited. Led by Barnave and
Lameth, they raised a tumult of hisses and interrup-
tions.

But once again and almost for the last time Mirabeau
dominated the Assembly by the sheer weight of his
personality. In a fury he swung round upon the men

138 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

who would have shouted him down, and quelled
them with the famous phrase, thundered out in that
great roar of his : " Silence, those thirty voices 1 "

They were silent — for the moment, but at the
Jacobins that night the malcontents proclaimed their
anger and their wrongs loudly and at length.

Yet Mirabeau was not the man who would let the
opportunity pass to follow up an advantage. He also
presented himself at the Jacobins, and confronted the
fury of the Lameths and Duport. Once again he was
victorious, at least according to almost all accounts,
and finally descended from the tribune amidst
thunders of applause.

We are bound to confess that Camille gives a rather
different version of the affair. If we may trust him,
Mirabeau was visibly abashed before the attacks of
Lameth and his supporters. Camille, in fact, in a
metaphor which he can scarcely have realised was
really the highest of praise, compared Mirabeau to a
new Christ on a new Calvary.

However, on this occasion, as on many others, it is
impossible to accept implicitly Camille's authority.
In this connection we cannot do better than quote
Mr. J. H. McCarthy's very just estimate of the
journalist's veracity.

" It would be absurd," he says, " to take Camille Desmoulins
seriously or to rely seriously on his account of any event. He
was above all things emotional, sensitive to the impressions of
the hour ; he cannot be gravely credited with opinions of his
own ; he was the prey of impulses, the sport of passions, a
fascinating child."

Moreover, where Mirabeau is concerned Camille
was biassed. He was now one of the foremost accusers
of the great man, he who had once loved Mirabeau
" as a mistress."

Nevertheless, in this case it would not be just to
accuse the journalist of inconstancy. In his own

THE WEST WIND 139

phrase, it was the wind that had changed, and not the
weathercock. From Camille's point of view Mirabeau
was indeed a traitor, but it is undeniable that a certain
amount of private bitterness affected his attitude
towards his one-time friend. Mirabeau had never
taken his young protege sufficiently seriously, and
Camille longed to show him that he was a force to be
reckoned with.

Not that Mirabeau had ever appeared to underrate
Camille's powers as a journalist ; he knew too well the
growing importance of the Press. There may be a
certain amount of exaggeration in the assertions made
by Camille a little later in a letter to Brissot, but it is
equally probable that they contain a great deal of
truth.

" His friends know how much he [Mirabeau] dreaded my
censure," he says, " which was read by Marseilles and which
will be read by posterity. It is well known that more than once
he sent his secretary from a distance of two leagues to entreat
me to withdraw a page of what I had written ; to make this
sacrifice to friendship, to his great past services, and to the
hope of those in the future. Say then whether I sold myself
to Mirabeau ? I did not know that traitors, immensely
inferior to him in talent, and but recently listened to from the
tribune, were about to lead us to the ruin of our liberty far
more treacherously than he ; and that they would force me to
implore pardon from his great shade and daily to mourn the
loss to France of her resources in his genius, and the loss to
liberty of his love of glory."

This was written when a reaction had set in where
Camille's feelings towards Mirabeau were concerned.
He had had time to realise the worth of the great man
who was dead, to see his services to his country in their
true perspective, to know how much the poorer France
was for his loss.

It is fruitless to theorise here for the hundredth
time as to what would have been the effect upon
history if Mirabeau had lived. It is possible that he

140 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

might have been able, by the power of his single arm,
to save the monarchy. Again, it is possible that he
might have failed and paid for his failure with his^
life, like so many of those successors of his who seemed
in their day to be almost as great as he.

But apart from theories the bare fact remains that
Mirabeau died on the second day of April, 1791, at
the very time when he seemed most needful, most in-
dispensable to the King, the Monarchy, France itself.

He had been failing in health all through the early
spring. He was worn out in body and soul, though his
brain and his mind were as keen and active as ever,
almost to the end. Past hardships and present excesses
overwhelmed him ; he was, as Carlyle expresses it,
burnt out.

There came a day when he made his last speech in
the Assembly, a speech which was an act of service to
a friend, the banker, de la Marck. He returned to his
own house to die.

Much has been written of that death, dramatic and
theatrical as his life, yet not, for that reason, necessarily
insincere. It was Mirabeau's nature to play a part ;
simpUcity in him would have been in itself an affecta-
tion. Wrung with agony as he was, he prayed to be
surrounded with flowers, to be bathed in perfumes.
He spoke to his friends in high-sounding phrases,
until pain overmastered him, and he could ask for
nothing more save sleep.

He was conscious of his own greatness. Like Dan-
ton, who, knowingly or unknowingly, echoed his very
words, he spoke of his head as being " worth supporting
carefully." And so Mirabeau died, surrounded by his
friends, who mourned for him in all sincerity.

Paris was dumb beneath the shock. There had been
no popular expectation of the great Tribune's death.
All their indignation against this idol of theirs was
forgotten by the people. They could only remember
that Mirabeau was dead.

THE WEST WIND 141

While he lay dying, crowds stood silently around the
house, waiting to hear the latest news. When he had
passed away, men, meeting each other in the streets,
accounted for their undisguised tears by the mere
words that : " Mirabeau was dead." On the day of
his funeral, every shop was closed, all Paris put on
mourning attire to follow him by thousands to the
grave.

Camille Desmoulins was not numbered amongst the
friends who stood by the bedside of the dying Mira-
beau. Amidst the paeans of praise which rose to the
memory of the dead man, Camille's voice was dumb.

It may be attributed to the journalist's horror of
being accused of inconsistency that he would not
write, even now, in praise of him who, rightly or
wrongly, he believed to have betrayed his country. He
even reproved the people, in terms which seem unduly
bitter, for their adulation of the dead Tribune. He
will scarcely even allow him eminence as an orator.

" Mirabeau was eloquent, but he reigned in the tribune
rather by his talent as an actor than by the power of his
mind."

Words which must be allowed to contain a certain
amount of truth, when we consider how dull and
lifeless Mirabeau's speeches appear read now in cold
print, unanimated by the personality of the orator.

In another passage Camille is far more bitter and
violent.

" Go then, O corrupt nation," he cries, " O stupid people,
and prostrate yourself before the tomb of this honest man, the
Mercury of his age, and the god of orators, liars, and thieves ! "

These must needs seem to us cruel words, spoken
as they were of a man who was not yet cold in his grave.
One cannot but wish that at least Camille had kept
silence, had forborne to blame where he could not
conscientiously praise. But that was not in the nature

142 CAMItLE DESMOULINS

of the man, and his own best defence of the attitude
which he took up at this time is to be found in
another part of his writings.

There is something infinitely pathetic in the simple,
unaffected words. It is as though Camille here
allowed himself to express his real, honest grief for
the friend, not his opinion of the public man.

" Death, which knits up again every attachment, brought
me back to his house before it entered there, as indeed any
peril of his would have brought me back ; and it was not my
fault if his servants did not tell him how much I grieved for
his illness. But I could do no more than write my name at
his door. I had preferred my love for truth to the friendship
of Mirabeau."

V

■A LTHOUGH the plans of the Court had

/% been laid secretly for months past, it is
h — ^ probable that the King and Queen had
A^ Ji^ not intended to make any attempt to
carry them into execution until it was proved that
Mirabeau could not, or would not, help them to
attain their ends by other means. It is difficult to be
certain whether the stories of Mirabeau's private
interviews with Marie- Antoinette are true or false.
At least it was a method which she, conscious of her
personal charm, often made use of when she wished
to transform an enemy into a friend. A few months
afterwards Barnave, staunch Revolutionary as he was,
became her slave for life through a few kind words
and an appeal for his sympathy in a degrading situa-
tion. It was also by means of a private interview
that the Queen tried later to win over the Girondist
party, through Guadet, one of their leaders, an
attempt in which she was, to a certain extent, suc-
cessful.

In any case, and by whatever means, Mirabeau's
power and influence had been gained by the Court
party. There is little or no doubt but that he was
prepared to throw all his weight into the scales against
the further advance of the Revolution.

But a greater power than his intervened ; Mirabeau
died, and the King and Queen were left to carry out
their plans as best they might.

What those plans were is well known now. We may
read the voluminous correspondence carried on with

143

144 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

the leaders of the emigration, whilst, to all seeming,
Louis was resigned to the prospect of becoming a
mere constitutional monarch. It was the old story of
too many conspirators. Part of their plans leaked out
here, a rash word was spoken there. There were
orders and counter-orders, commands and counter-
mands, the one contradicting the other. If only all
the arrangements had been left to be organised by
one man the flight to Varennes might not now be
known as one of the great fiascos of history. If
Bouille had been left to himself . . . but there are
so many possibilities hanging on that word " if."

If the King had been another man, or the Queen a
different woman, if his Majesty's legitimate meals had
not been more important than any considerations of
safety, and if her Maj*esty had been content to travel
without her huge, gold-mounted dressing-case, things
might have fallen out quite otherwise than they did.

There had been rumours afloat in Paris that the
Royal family meditated flight. Again and again these
rumours were contradicted by the King, and by
Lafayette, who was still to some extent a popular
idol. Some of the more wide-awake journalists — and
amongst these Camille Desmoulins was prominent —
put no faith in these protestations. At Easter time
the populace, stirred up by Danton, prevented the
King from going to St. Cloud, believing, and probably
with good reason, that this was only the first step
in a journey which would carry him beyond the
frontier.

There was no active ill-feeling against the King.
The people of the lower classes were, in fact, fond of
him. They wished to keep him amongst them, they
regarded his person as a kind of talisman. As for the
more enlightened men of the Revolutionary party, the
members of the Assembly and others, they quite
plainly saw the value of the King and his family as
hostages. Once they had succeeded in joining the

THE WEST WIND 145

emigrants, Paris and France would be at the mercy of
a Coalition formed to bring back the old monarchy,
unreformed and unconstitutional.

Camille, as usual, was bolder than his compeers.
Some time before the King's flight, he stated in his
journal that only the name of monarchy was left to
France, and that, setting aside five or six decrees,
which contradicted one another, France had been
formed into a Republic. Camille, indeed, had grown
very bitter against the King as a man, and not only
as a monarch. Again and again he jeers at his greedy
appetite, his fatness, his slow-wittedness, all those
little vulgar faults which made poor Louis such an
unregal figure.

The King fell ill in March, and for a short time was
rather seriously unwell. Camille takes the opportunity
in the " Revolutions " to laugh at the Assembly for
being interrupted daily " to hear the ridiculous
technology of the doctors on the occasion of the cold
of the eldest of the Capets." It is easy to see that
loyalty and reverence for the King were almost a thing
of the past, in Paris at least, when such language as
-this could pass unreproved and unpunished.

During the spring and early summer of 1 79 1
preparations were made for the elections to the new
Assembly, which was to succeed its predecessor in the
autumn.

The members were to be elected according to the
property suffrage laws which had been passed in the
preceding January, and the qualifications for eligibility
to the Assembly laid down by these laws were stringent
enough to make them most obnoxious to the advanced
Liberals.

The extreme party foresaw plainly that the result of
this limited suffrage would be to form an assembly
composed of prosperous, middle-class men, elected by
similar persons, an assembly which would be far too
law-abiding and property-respecting to suit the views

146 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

of the leaders of the Jacobins and Cordeliers. They
regarded these property qualifications as marking a
distinctly retrograde movement, since the States-
General, or Constituent Assembly, had been elected
practically on a basis of universal suffrage.

Accordingly at the beginning of June protests were
made by the Clubs and the Fraternal Societies of Paris
demanding universal suffrage, and the repeal of what
was known as the " silver mark " qualification. It
was so called because in order to be eligible for election
to the Assembly it was necessary for the candidate to
be possessed of real estate, and also to pay a direct tax
equal to a mark of silver.

We find Camille taking a prominent part in this
movement of opposition to the property suffrage laws
on June i6th. The section of the Theatre Frangais, to
which both he and Danton belonged, united in
primary assembly on this day and refused to join in a
collective petition which it considered illegal. How-
ever, Garran de Coulon, Danton, Bonneville, and
Camille Desmoulins were entrusted with the task of
drafting a petition which the members of the section
would sign individually.

The influence of Camille is very plainly traceable
in the literary style of this document. It is really
an effective piece of work and quite worthy of repro-
duction.

" Fathers of the Country," it begins, " recognise your own
decrees ! The law is the expression of the general will, and we
see with sorrow that those who saved the country on the
14th of July, who then sacrificed their lives to snatch you from
the dangers which threatened you, count for nothing in the
primary assemblies.

" To order citizens to obey laws which they have neither
made nor sanctioned is to condemn to slavery the very men
who have overthrown a despotism. No ; the French will not
suffer such a thing. We, active citizens, will have none of it.

" You have put civic degradation amongst the greatest
penalties. The penal Code enacts that the Clerk of the

THE WEST WIND

147

Court shall say to the criminal : Your country has found you
convicted of an infamous action ; the law degrades you from
the quality of a French citizen.

" What is the infamous action of which you have found two
hundred thousand citizens of the capital guilty ? To declare
that taxation shall be imposed by the Nation alone, and, in
another decree, to exclude from the rights of a citizen the
majority of tax-paying citizens, is to destroy the nation.
The social art is to govern all by all. Therefore annul these
decrees, which violate your sublime Declaration of the rights
of men and citizens ; give back to us our brothers, to rejoice
with us in the benefits of a Constitution which they im-
patiently await, which they have courageously sustained !
Unless the whole Nation sanction your decrees, there is
neither Constitution nor liberty."

This petition was afterwards combined with one
from the Gobelins section and presented at the
National Assembly on June 19th or 20th. It was sent
in to the Committee of Constitution, but nothing
particularly definite resulted from it. The October
elections took place on the property qualifications, and
the new Assembly, thoroughly bourgeois as it was,
fully justified the fears of its opponents.

Towards the beginning and middle of June more
definite rumours of the plans of the Court leaked out.
Frequent paragraphs appeared in Camille's paper and
others, warning the people that the King was about
to make an attempt to escape. But the lower classes
of the populace trusted Lafayette and Lafayette
trusted the King ; in consequence nothing was done.

The story of that 21st of June, 1791, has been told
again and again, the incidents of those few summer
days have formed the subject of more than one entire
volume. One may read of it in fullest detail above all
in M. Lenotre's vivid and powerful monograph, the
" Fhght of Marie-Antoinette."

It is with good reason that historians have dwelt
upon the events of the flight to Varennes. It may be
called with justice one of the great turning-points of

148 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

the French Revolution, and it is a question whether
its success would have more entirely altered the aspect
of affairs than did its failure.

For days past the rumours of the King's projected
flight had grown more and more persistent, in fact, so
persistent were they that they defeated their own
object. The journalists had cried " Wolf ! " so often
that now they were not credited. Here is Camille's
own account of the events of the evening before, as he
saw them.

" I was coming away from the Jacobins with Danton and
some other patriots," he says, " at eleven o'clock, and aU the
way home we encountered only one patrol. Paris seemed to
be so completely deserted that I remarked upon it. One of
us who had a letter in his pocket in which he was informed
that the King was to go away that night, went to have a look
at the Chateau and saw M. de Lafayette entering the gates at
eleven o'clock."

The extraordinary thing would seem to be that the
flight was even partially successful, since suspicion
seems to have been so widespread.

The escape was discovered in the early morning,
when the fugitives were already well advanced on their
road. The news spread through the capital like a spark
in tinder. Paris was soon in a turmoil. Excited groups
of people ran hither and thither, not knowing to whom,
or against whom, to turn. In No. 82 of his paper
Camille expresses what were the feelings of the
majority of the people at that moment.

"On Tuesday, the 21st of June," he writes, "it became
known that the King and all his family had fled. It was at
eleven o'clock at night that the general decamfativos of the
male and female Capets took place, and it was not until nine
o'clock in the morning that the news was known. Treason !
Perjury ! Barnave and Lafayette are abusing our confidence."

Lafayette was naturally the scapegoat. He was
responsible ; it was he who had allowed his charges to

THE WEST WIND 149

escape. As Commandant of the National Guard of
Paris, he should have made sure that such a thing
was impossible. In this emergency, Lafayette acted as
usual like a brave man ; what was not quite so usual
with him, he behaved like a wise one. He showed him-
self in the streets, both alone, and together with
Beauharnais, President of the Assembly. He went
fearlessly to and fro, conspicuous, as we are told, in
his cocked hat, although in the face of the people's
indignation he must have done so at the imminent
risk of his life. The position was a terribly difficult
one, for, after all, had any person or persons the right
to stop the King from going where he chose ?

Lafayette and Beauharnais took the law into their
own hands and despatched two couriers with the
authority of the Assembly to arrest the flight, if it was
in their power to do so.

The Assembly held a permanent sitting all through
that sultry summer day and the succeeding hot airless
night. The members from time to time went out
into the Tuileries Gardens for a breath of air, but,
nevertheless, before the session was at an end, many had
fallen asleep on their benches from utter weariness.

Indeed, there was much food for the consideration
of the Assembly. Some form of Government must
be established for the duration of the King's absence,
were it for an hour, a day, or a year. The form which
that Government really took was, to all intents and
purposes, that of a Republic. The Assembly assumed
the supreme authority, decrees were issued in its
name, documents sealed with its seal. It was a
curious result of Louis' flight that he thereby drove
the hitherto monarchical Assembly into republicanism.

It was in this fashion that the deputies of the people
passed the time, whilst they waited for news, good or
bad. Meanwhile the populace of^the capital repaired
to the deserted palace of the Tuileries. No need for
ceremony now. The King and Queen had fled, and in

ISO CAMILLE DESMOULINS

doing so had taught their people disrespect for royalty.
Half-laughing, half-angry, they swarmed through the
King's house, staining the rich carpets with their
muddy boots, soiling the hangings and ornaments
with the inquisitive touch of their grimy fingers.

A market woman seated herself on the very bed of
Marie-Antoinette and from thence sold cherries to the
jeering crowd. There were ribald jests and coarse
laughter. One may be sure that the Queen was not
spared in her absence, since they had mocked her
already to her face.

That evening of June 21st there was a stormy
meeting at the Jacobins. Robespierre made a violent
speech, denouncing those in authority, accusing the
ministry of complicity in the escape, and declaring
that he did not fear the death which he braved by his
boldness.

Camille was present at the sitting, and, carried away
by excitement, he rose in his place and shouted that
all who were there were ready to die with Robespierre
if need be. The whole club responded with cheers and
enthusiasm to the journalist's lead.

Tidings came at last, and after no long delay. The
fugitives had been arrested and detained, although
not by Lafayette's somewhat half-hearted envoys. It
was the quickness and resource of Drouet, the famous
postmaster of Sainte-Menehould, which had been
mainly instrumental in saving France — to use the
phraseology of the day. A series of misapprehensions
and mistakes in the arrangement of the flight certainly
aided him, and, above all, the weakness of the King,
who, as usual, yielded with a better grace than was
either seemly or necessary.

When Lafayette's aide-de-camp, Romeuf, arrived
at Varennes, the Royal family were already virtually
prisoners, although determined action on the part of
the King might have led to their escape at any moment
even then.

THE WEST WIND 151

Then followed that terrible dragged-out journey back
to Paris, in the crowded berlin, accompanied by the
deputies from the Assembly, Petion, Barnave and
Latour-Maubeuge, who met the party on the road.
Yet even in the dust and discomfort of the stifling
summer weather the Queen did not lose her powers
of fascination. Before they reached the capital
Barnave was her avowed champion, Barnave, the
staunchest of Revolutionaries heretofore.

That little procession found Paris in a strange state.
The people had recaptured their King and Queen,
but, like children when some ardently desired thing is
possessed, it really seemed now as though they did not
want them so very much after all.

Camille says in the " Revolutions " for this date :
" What can the Capets have hoped on reading this
placard carried on the point of a pike : * Whosoever
applauds the King will be clubbed ; whosoever insults
him will be hanged.' "

It was this line of conduct which the populace
followed in the main, but the general feeling was
distinctly hostile towards the prisoners. It showed
itself from the first, and when the carriage reached
the Tuileries, it was evinced in a determined attack
upon the faithful bodyguard, who were only saved by
the active intervention of the deputies from the
Assembly.

In No. 83 of his journal Camille, whilst he intends
to insult, really pays a genuine tribute to the brave
bearing of Marie-Antoinette upon this occasion.

" She descended from the carriage," he says, " in the
attitude of a suppliant, and with a humiliated countenance ;
but she walked up the staircase with her nose in the air, and
quite unabashed."

In the same number the journalist describes Louis'
demeanour on re-entering the Tuileries with un-
doubted truth, since it agrees with the testimony of

152 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

other witnesses in most particulars. Camille says
that the King's only comment as he entered his
apartment was : —

" It's devilish hot ! " and then : " That was a journey.

However, I had it in my mind for a long time. I have done a
foolish thing, I confess. But may I not have my follies like
other people ? Come on, bring me a fowl."

After which not essentially kingly speech, Louis XVI
proceeded to eat his supper with, an appetite which,
as Camille says, would have done honour to the King
of Cockayne.

During the first few weeks which succeeded the
King's flight and recapture public feeling ran very
high. It is true that there was not much open demand
for a Republic, but the Assembly continued to
conduct a form of Government which was, to all
intents and purposes, republican. Louis was, as it
were, suspended. There was a distinct understanding
that he was not to be allowed to resume the throne
until it was definitely decided what were to be the
exact limitations of his power.

Camille again was amongst the most outspoken of
the journalists. The tone of his paper became very
threatening towards the King, as the following extract
will show : —

" As the king-animal is an aliquot portion of the human
species, and as men have the simplicity to make him an integral
portion of the body politic, it is essential that he should be
subjected to the laws of society, which have declared that any
man who shall be taken with arms in his hand against the
Nation shall be punished with death ; and also to the laws of
the human species, to the natural right which permits me to
kill the enemy who attacks me. Now the King has aimed
at the Nation. It is true that he has missed fire, but it is the
Nation's turn now."

As usual, Camille was before his time. Few, if any,
of the politicians of June, 1791, went so far as he.

THE WEST WIND 153

But these words, almost incredibly daring as they were
then, were mere commonplaces in the mouths of men
eighteen months later.

It was not only Royalty which Camille attacked ;
he inveighed with violence against almost all the
existing powers of the State. In his journal at this
time we find him saying that the unfaithful representa-
tives of the people were fair game, and not content
with vilifying Lafayette himself, he writes with scorn
and contempt of the National Guard which he
commanded.

" The National Guard in its present organisation," he says,
" is a dead weight on the breast of the people — we may gather
their sentiments from the bleu-de-Roi colour of their uniforms
— and there will be no improvement until their shakos have
been superseded by the woollen caps of the people."

Camille was overhasty ; the turn of the nation was
not yet fully come. Many events were to take place,
much blood was to be shed before that January day,
when the sovereign people did indeed take its revenge
for the wrongs which it had suffered at the hands of
Louis and his predecessors.

PART THREE
THE EAST WIND

" He feedeth on wind, and followeth after the East Wind ;
he daily increaseth lies and desolation."

Hosea xii. I.

I

IN spite of the immense upheaval of public
feeling which was the result of the Varennes
flight, the advanced party in the State did not,
as might have been expected, at once gain the
ascendancy. On the contrary, during the remainder
of this year the Counter Revolution made its last
great stand, and for a time it almost seemed as though
it would be victorious.

In this apparent, though only momentary downfall
of the Republican cause Camille's fortunes were very
intimately involved. Hitherto he had been from the
first consistently and steadily successful ; now he was
to receive a distinct and unwelcome check. The wind
had changed once more, and it was no favouring
breeze for Camille which blew now.

Immunity from attack had made the journalist very
bold. He had grown to think that he could say exactly
what he liked without fear of the consequences. It
came as a shock to Camille to find that the Press was
not yet free to the extent that he had believed to be
the case.

The Assembly was by no means prepared to go to
extremes as far as the King was concerned. The
majority amongst them did not, as yet, desire a Re-
public. They wished for a monarchy still, albeit a
limited and strictly constitutional monarchy. But
the mass of the people was rapidly becoming more and
more anti-monarchical, and it soon appeared that they
did not intend to submit tamely to the legislation of
their representatives in this matter.

157

158 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

As early as June 24th thirty thousand citizens
assembled in the Place Vendome under Theophile
Mandar, and demanded that the Assembly should
decide nothing as to the fate of Louis XVI before
consulting the departments.

On July 9th the Cordeliers Club took the matter in
hand and sent a similar petition to the Assembly,
drawn up by Boucher Saint-Sauveur. This petition
the President, Charles de Lameth, refused to read.
Their demand being thus disregarded, the Cordeliers
determined upon a very bold and aggressive step. On
July 1 2th they appealed to the people to suspend the
decree announcing the elections for the forthcoming
assembly, by means of an insurrection ; the Club in
this manner definitely incited the populace to take up
arms.

Meanwhile the day of the festival in commemoration
of the taking of the Bastille was at hand, and the people
became more and more restless and excited. On
July 14th one hundred citizens of Paris drew up an-
other petition, and the reading of it caused democratic
demonstrations to take place at the Champ-de-Mars,
where the " referendum " to the departments was
openly demanded.

On this same day a large number of citizens adopted
a petition drawn up by Massulard, which required
that : " The Assembly postpones any determination
as to the fate of Louis XVI until the clearly expressed
wish of the whole Empire has been heard." These
petitioners sent two delegates to the Assembly, but
they only succeeded in obtaining an interview with
Robespierre, Petion and Bailly, who told them that
their protests were useless as the decree exculpating
Louis had already been brought forward.

Nevertheless, on the evening of July 15th, at the
Jacobins Club, Choderlos de Laclos, who, be it noted,
was an accredited agent of the Duke of Orleans, asked
that another petition might be drawn up demanding

THE EAST WIND 159

the referendum, which should be signed by " all
citizens " without distinction, active, passive, women
and children. This document was to be sent through-
out all the departments of France for signature.

As the members were voting on the question a
deputation from the Palais Royal broke into the hall.
The President Anthoine suggested to them the
adoption of Laclos' petition. This mixed assembly
then nominated Lanthenas, Danton, Brissot, Sergent
and Ducancel to draw it up, but it was Brissot alone
who really performed the task.

Late that night a secret meeting was held in
Danton's rooms, at which Camille, Brune and La
Poype were present, to consult as to the best means of
spreading the movement through the provinces and of
obtaining the largest possible number of signatures.

Next morning the petition was read in the Church
of the Jacobins. It concluded thus : —

" The undersigned Frenchmen formally and particularly
request that the National Assembly shall accept, in the name
of the Nation, the abdication effected by Louis XVI on June
2 1 St of the crown which had been entrusted to him and
provide for his replacement, by all constitutional means, the
undersigned declaring that they will never recognise Louis
XVI as their King, unless, indeed, the majority of the Nation
should express a desire contrary to the petition."

The promoters of this petition obviously intended
that all their proceedings should be marked by a regard
for law and order. The municipality was formally
notified, according to the legal requirements, that they
intended to assemble in the Champ-de-Mars. Camille
and eight others signed this notification. Permission
was given, and accordingly Danton and three more
read the petition aloud from the four corners of the
Altar of the Country.

There was a heated discussion at the Jacobins that
evening. Some of the extreme republicans wished to
insert " nor any other King " after the statement

i6o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

that they would not accept Louis XVI to reign over
them. In the midst o£ the arguments and deUberations
they received the notification that the Assembly had
made its proclamation exculpating the King.

The petition was accordingly withdrawn, and an
announcement to that effect was publicly made in the
Champ-de-Mars next day.

As far as the Jacobin party was concerned this was
the end of the matter. Danton, Camille and the rest
were prepared to yield to circumstances, for the
moment at any rate, and to give up the idea of a
petition ; in fact this was the course that they actually
adopted. Not so the extremists. A fresh petition
was drawn up on the 17th of the month by the more
violent republicans, the most active spirit amongst
them being Robert, the journalist, who, as we shall
see later, was a friend of Camille and his wife.

This time the demand was forcibly made that the
Assembly should repeal its decree of exculpation.
Neither Danton, Camille, nor any other noted Jacobin
or Cordelier signed this petition, and there is not a
shred of evidence to prove that they were in any way
accessory to it.

It was read in the Champ-de-Mars, where an
immense crowd assembled to hear it. The mob
attacked and killed two men who were discovered
hiding under the altar of the country, and who were
suspected of being spies. In reality they were there
for quite a different purpose, and one which was
harmless from a political point of view.

A riot ensued, and Bailly, Mayor of Paris, and
Lafayette, as commandant of the National Guard,
hoisted the red flag of martial law and despatched
troops to fire upon and disperse the mob. For the
moment the action of the Municipality was entirely
successful. Many of the rioters were killed or wounded
and the remainder dispersed to their homes, terrorised
and dismayed.

THE EAST WIND i6i

Nevertheless, Bailly and Lafayette had acted with
great unwisdom — unless they were prepared to carry
out the system which they had adopted to its legitimate
end and to put down the extremists by means of the
most stringent measures. The Municipality had
definitely taken up arms against the people. Only a
few years later Bailly, on his way to the guillotine, was
to learn whether the Parisian mob had forgotten the
" massacre of the Champ-de-Mars."

It has been necessary to give this rather precise
account of the various petitions in order to show
plainly that Camille was not actually involved in this
last and most famous demonstration, which led to the
riots and military intervention.

Nevertheless, when a decree was drawn up by
Bernardon the i8th, Camille, Santerre and Legendre
were amongst the fourteen included in the accusation.
The charges against them were somewhat vague, but
they were accused practically of trying to intimidate
the National Assembly, and of wishing to institute a
Republic.

Now in theory Camille was undoubtedly guilty on
both these counts, but in practice he was, in this
instance, more or less unjustly accused.

In spite of the warrant which had been issued
against him Camille spoke that night of July i8th at
the Jacobins. In fact, he seems to have made a most
violent speech against Lafayette and Bailly, whom he
stigmatised as the " two arch-Tartuifes of civism."
After the meeting was over, however, he did not
return to his own home, but took refuge with some
friends in another part of the city. He remained in
hiding for some weeks and thus managed to evade
arrest.

Danton meanwhile took refuge at Fontenay-sous-
Bois and afterwards in England until the storm should
have blown over. It is recorded by an old writer,
J. Adolphus, in his curious " Biographical Memoirs "

i62 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

of the French Revolution, pubhshed in 1799, that
Camille fled to Marseilles during this period of out-
lawry. He gives as his authority for this statement
the '^ Mercure Frangais, No. 30," and Moore's
" View." It is quite possible that the writer is correct
on this point, but the unreliability of most of his
information with regard to Camille makes one hesitate
to accept his authority.

The affair of the Champ-de-Mars caused Camille's
journal to die a violent death. The municipality was
determined to put an end to the unbounded licence
of the Press, to which, rightly enough, was attributed
most of the trouble which had taken place. It would
have gone hard with Camille if he had fallen into the
hands of his enemies at this juncture. Prudhomme,
the editor of the " Revolutions de Paris," was mis-
taken for him and very roughly handled by the
National Guard on the Pont Neuf . In the same place
Stanislas Freron, Camille's friend and sub-editor, had
a narrow escape from death.

Only one more number of the " Revolutions de
France et de Brabant " was issued after July i8th, a
number which the journalist dedicated ironically to
Lafayette, the " phoenix of alguazil-mayors." In
conclusion Camille asks his fellow-editor Prudhomme
to send five numbers of the " Revolutions de Paris "
to the subscribers of the defunct journal, thus com-
pleting the three months due to them. The number
ends with the words : " It costs me much to lay down
my pen," words which show so plainly the spirit of the
true journalist.

Camille's printing office was sacked and the plant
destroyed by some soldiers who were sent to arrest
the editor himself, and were disappointed in their
hope of finding him there. The National Guardsmen
revenged themselves by handling his secretary, Roch
Marcandier, very roughly. This man, a Guisard also,
was a curious and interesting character. He certainly

THE EAST WIND 163

seems later to have treated Camille badly, and his
word-portrait of him in a pamphlet entitled " Hommes
des Proies " is both violent and exaggerated.

M. Claretie treats Marcandier with the utmost
contempt, but his career was picturesque and by no
means wholly discreditable. He certainly displayed
great bravery some time later, when he inveighed
against the leaders o£ the " ultras " at the height of
the Terror. This bravery cost him his life, and in
that respect he was the precursor of Camille himself,
since he died as the result of an appeal for clemency.

The enquiry into the affair of the Champ-de-Mars
dragged on from July 23rd to August 8th, and the
proceedings were continued until August 21st. On
this latter date the writs of arrest against Camille
and five others were cancelled in favour of a
summons.

At the beginning of September Camille, perhaps
emboldened by this fact, was rash enough to take up
an aggressive attitude towards the Municipality. He
posted a large rose-coloured placard addressed to
" Passers-by " in prominent positions throughout
several districts of Paris. It began in a fashion which
certainly cannot be called conciliatory.

" I beg you to stop a moment and say to whom you would
give the prize of virtue, if you had to choose between the
benches of the convicts and the seats of the Tribunal of the
sixth arrondissement. You have learned from the placard of
Santerre that, false witnesses having failed, Bernard, the
public prosecutor, supplied the false evidence by sending
to the ' Friend of the Citizens ' and signing with his own
hand a false extract from depositions which did not exist."

After this fairly outspoken indictment of the legal
proceedings of the Commune of Paris, Camille goes
on to say that the only evidence which that body can
even pretend to find, connecting him with the affair
of the Champ-de-Mars, is that on July 3rd he had been

1 64 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

heard to read aloud a petition in the Cafe Procope,
maintaining that assignats were the patrimony of the
poor.

" No," cries Camille. " My crime is that I am uncorruptible,
that I have not chosen to make my pen the slave of any parties
who have courted it and bargained for it : my crime is that I
am the irreconcilable enemy of all enemies of the public
welfare. . . . One of the judges has said publicly that there
were no more charges, no more depositions, no more accusa-
tions, and yet the tribunal, sitting with closed doors, dis-
missed my demand to be remanded, at least, for a further
hearing. Thus I remain under an accusation, without any
accusation ! "

This placard naturally did not pass unremarked.
A report was made to the Procureur of the Commune
upon the " incendiary document signed Camille
Desmoulins." It was stigmatised as " insulting,
indecent and disgusting," and as calculated to excite
citizens to " share with its author those sentiments of
contempt which he impudently professes to entertain
towards the members of the tribunal. The said
writing being seditious, inflammatory and likely to i

disturb the public tranquillity "

Nevertheless, beyond tearing down the posters
wherever they were found and giving notice of their
existence to the police, no further steps appear to have
been taken.

The Assembly proclaimed a general amnesty on
September nth, and from that time the prosecutions
seem to have been abandoned. However, Camille
was evidently not very sure of his own standing in the
matter, since he appealed to the Assembly about the
middle of the month to ascertain whether he preserved
his title and functions of elector. This question was
disregarded, but we find, nevertheless, that Camille
did serve in this capacity for the section of the Theatre
Frangais when the elections took place during October
for the new Legislative Assembly.

THE EAST WIND 165

Camille appeared in public on October 21st and
read a paper at the Jacobins on the poHtical situation
at the opening of the new Assembly. He had just been
elected Secretary to the Society of Friends of the
Constitution, and, as he said himself, he regarded this
nomination as an invitation to break silence once more.

Certainly this paper does not show Camille to be
one whit less bold and aggressive than before. Neither
his opinions nor his language are in any way subdued
by his enforced silence, and he attacks all those whom
he considers moderates as vehemently as ever.

" We did not only ask that royalty should be extinguished,"
he says, " but that a tyranny worse than royalty should not be
established in its place ; for when was any monarch so in-
violable that he would have dared to treat his subjects as the
citizens were treated at Nancy and in the Champ-de-Mars,
without exposing himself to the tragic fate of a Nero or a
Caligula ? "

On the whole, however, Camille and the other
extreme Republicans found it wisest to keep their
opinions more or less to themselves for a time. The
day of the Champ-de-Mars had left the Moderatists
victorious. There was a great and pronounced
reaction in favour of royalty — a reaction which lasted
for almost a year.

Not that the King and Queen were genuinely
resigned to their fate. The Queen at least was more
determined than ever to reassume power, to bring
back the old order of things in its entirety. As
appeared afterwards, a. constant correspondence was
kept up between the French court and that of Austria,
a correspondence which ultimately resulted in the
coalition of the powers of Europe against France, and
in the great war.

Yet to all outward seeming the King and even
Marie-Antoinette were submissive. On September
13th Louis XVI signified his acceptance of the Con-

i66 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

stitution, and an extraordinary outburst of loyalty
followed. The Parisians seemed to think that the
millennium was come, that all would now go well with
France.

The whole Royal family, with Lafayette beside
them, walked by torchlight in the Champs Elysees
amid the applause of the populace. They appeared
at the theatres, and the actors on the stage were
neglected, whilst the audience cheered the King and
Queen again and again. A verse of a popular song of
these days has come down to us. The doggerel
couplets express plainly the spirit of the time.

" Notre bon roi
A tout fait ;
Et notre bonne reine
Qu'elle eut de peine !
Enfin les v'la
Hors d'embarra ! "

On September 25th the King and his family were
present when a " Te Deum " was sung at Notre Dame,
and on the day when the Assembly finally separated
Louis again renewed his protestations of loyalty to the
Constitution. He further propitiated the populace
by distributing 50,000 livres in alms to the poor.

It was no wonder that, while the current of public
feeling ran so high in favour of royalty, Camille and
his like were perforce silent. It must be remembered,
of course, that the journalist had now no paper and
therefore no means of expressing his views, for it
was never by the eloquence of his tongue that Camille
could make himself felt. The time was not propitious
for the re-publication of a paper on the lines of the
" Revolutions de France," and it is doubtful whether
Camille could have found anyone to produce it for
him, even if he had possessed the necessary money.
At the moment his principles were not popular.

It does not for a moment follow that because the

THE EAST WIND 167

journalist was silent, he had in any way modified his
views, or was himself affected in the smallest degree
by the passing outburst of loyalty. It is quite certain
that this was not the case ; but Camille, in common
with others, was a little cowed. He waited further
developments, we may be sure, with no faith in the
protestations of the King and the seeming submissive-
ness of the Queen.

Possibly, as things were, he was contented enough
to wait thus. He was completely happy in his home
life, and probably, for a short time at least, a respite
from the tension of journalistic work was not un-
welcome. Not for long ; soon we find him writing to
his father : " My paper was a power. I should not
have discontinued it. That was a great folly of which
I was guilty."

So we picture Camille during the autumn and early
winter of 1791, happy certainly, contented in a mea-
sure, but a man, nevertheless, whose occupation was
gone, and who must needs chafe at idleness until he
is back in harness once more.

II

THE Legislative Assembly met in October,
1 79 1, and the spirit which animated this
new governing body was exactly what might
have been expected considering the circum-
stances under which it had been convoked.
. The Assembly was elected on the property suffrage
laws of January, 1 791, the same laws which, as we have
seen, had called forth such violent protests from the
sections and clubs of Paris in the preceding June.
In consequence this body of men had an entirely
different character from the former Constituent
Assembly, elected practically by universal suffrage,
and from the later National Convention, convoked
according to the laws of August loth, which decreed
virtually unlimited suffrage.

The Legislative Assembly was essentially bourgeois.
By far the larger proportion of the members were
provincial lawyers and their like. These men were
nearly all young, and exceedingly enthusiastic. The
methods of the Constituent Assembly had seemed to
them very slow ; they intended to reform everything
at a far higher rate of speed.

With the opening of the Legislative Assembly a
number of new actors appear upon the Revolutionary
stage. The self-denying ordinance passed by the late
goveTning body decreed that none of their members
might be re-elected to the new Assembly. Barnave,
Sieyes, the Lameths, Duport, Robespierre — all these
who played prominent parts at the beginning of
the Revolution are for the moment shelved, or,

168

THE EAST WIND 169

at best, can only pull the wires from behind the
scenes.

The new men, as has been said, were for the most
part lawyers, and amongst these provincial advocates
a little group stands out prominently. This coterie
later formed the nucleus of that rather incoherent
party which was to be known to posterity as that of
the " Girondins."

It was only a few of these men who, in reality, came
from the department of the Gironde, yet the epithet
has survived their other titles, which were in more
common use at the time, such as " Brissotins " and
" Rolandists." Perhaps it is this last name which
describes the party most exactly, since Madame Roland
was the tie which bound their disjointed members
together, and gave to them more or less unanimity.

Vergniaud, Guadet, Brissot, Louvet, Valaze, Bar-
baroux, Buzot — these names have more power to stir
the imagination than those of any other men of the
Revolution. Faulty they were, all of them, unwise
often in their private actions and their public policy
alike. They embarked on enterprises which they were
not prepared to carry through to their only legitimate
conclusion, they committed crimes for expediency's
sake which their hearts and consciences alike con-
demned. It is not by any means certain that the
Girondins were not the very precursors of the Terror
itself — certainly it is in the fiery speeches of Isnard
and Barbaroux that we first find terroristic methods
demanded.

But, in spite of everything, these men were dis-
interested and pure in their intentions. They honestly
wished to save their country ; had they only been far-
sighted and wise enough to accept Danton's offer of
collaboration, it is possible that they might have
succeeded. Girondin theories and Dantonist practice
would have gone far — had the combination been
possible.

lyo CAMILLE DESMOULINS

From the first the majority of the members of the
Legislative Assembly, led by the Girondist party, were
Republican in theory.

Moreover, they had just had a very successful re-
hearsal, as it were, of the Republican form of govern-
ment during the temporary suspension of the King.
Nevertheless, it would seem that for the time they were
neither anxious nor willing to carry their theories into
practice. They had determined to give royalty
another chance, and they began by establishing what
M. Aulard calls the " Bourgeois Monarchy." The
King was resettled upon the throne as head of the
executive. His powers were limited, it is true, but
nevertheless wide enough.

Possibly if Louis had been left to himself he would
have accepted the position philosophically, but left
to himself he never was, by his Queen and by his
advisers. Rightly or wrongly they laboured unceasingly
to rouse him from that constitutional apathy of his,
they goaded him onwards, drove him forward along that
road which was finally to lead him from supervision to
imprisonment, from imprisonment to the guillotine.

In the meantime everybody was hopeful. It looked
as though the new Constitution was working smoothly
and effectively enough during the early months of the
winter of 1791-92.

It was in January, 1792, that the first quarrel arose
between Camille Desmoulins and Brissot — the quarrel
which was to grow into that bitter enmity which
only ended in the downfall of Brissot and his party.
It all began, as one so often finds it to be the case where
Camille is concerned, in a personal affront to the
irritable and thin-skinned journalist.

Before the " Revolutions de France et de Brabant "
had ceased to appear a newspaper dispute had arisen
between the two writers. Brissot on more than one
occasion reproved his colleague, whom he considered
over-violent, in his characteristic, somewhat didactic

THE EAST WIND 171

manner, and he committed the unpardonable sin,
Vv^here Camille was concerned, of caUing the latter a
" young man," using the expression, of course, in the
sense that inferred inexperience.

The offence rankled. It was Camille's greatest
fault that he did not easily forget these trifling wounds
to his vanity. He only waited for an opportunity to
retaliate.

This opportunity was given to him by Brissot
himself nearly eight months later.

Since the decease of his paper, Camille had returned
to the practice of his profession, and at the beginning
of 1792 he defended the case of a woman named
Beifroi and a man, one Dithurbide, both accused of
running a gambling-house in the Passage Radziville.
They were condemned to six months' imprisonment
by the Correctional Police Court, and Camille
immediately published a kind of placard, which was
posted everywhere, protesting against what he con-
sidered was much too severe a punishment.

This broadsheet of Camille's was only half serious
in tone, but, for that very reason, it gave particular
offence to Brissot, whose attitude in such matters was
always severe and almost Puritanical. It was in
accordance with the character of the man, a character
in every way entirely antagonistic to Camille's,
although, if we are to believe Madame Roland,
Brissot, the man, was not in entire agreement with
Brissot the writer.

" His writings," she says of him, " are more calculated to
achieve good resuks than his personality, because they have aU
the authority which reason, justice and illumination may give
to such words, whereas personally he had none of that, lacking
dignity."

A very bitter article, written either by the editor
himself, or possibly by Girey-Dupre, appeared in
Brissot's journal " Le Patriote Frangais." This article
protested strongly against the attitude which Camille

172 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

had taken up with regard to gaming, and ended with
the words, certainly offensive enough : " This man only
calls himself a patriot that he may insult patriotism."

Camille was very deeply offended by this article.
As usual he retorted without the slightest considera-
tion, and his retort took the form of a most scurrilous
pamphlet, entitled " Jean-Pierre Brissot Unmasked."

It was a cruel and uncalled-for attack on Brissot's
personal character and public policy, in the main
untrue, or grossly exaggerated, but cleverly enough
written to be exceedingly injurious. A certain
amount of the mud stuck, and people remembered
Camille's cutting phrases and well-turned epigrams,
and used them with deadly effect later, when Brissot
and his party had fallen from popular favour.

There was an old story against Brissot which may
or may not have been partially true, but which, in
any case, might well have been suffered to rest in
oblivion. It was said that, many years before, he had
obtained money under false pretences, by means of
subscriptions for the publication of a book which never
appeared. In consequence amongst the lower ranks
of journalists the verb " brissoter " had been invented
to express this particular kind of cheating.

Camille brought up this story afresh, he refers to it
again and again, and for an epigraph to the pamphlet
he used the quotation from the Psalms : " Factus sum
in proverbium " — " I am become a proverb."

It would scarcely be possible to conceive a crueller
allusion, made all the more so by its very aptness and
wit.

The pamphlet had the success which generally falls
to a scurrilous personal attack. Moreover, it seemed
to have the effect of awakening Camille's appetite for
writing. Only a month or two later, in April, 1792,
we find him collaborating with Freron in the publica-
tion of a new journal, " Le Tribune des Patriotes."

Only four numbers of this paper appeared ; it

THE EAST WIND 173

ceased to exist at the end of May, but it is interesting
as showing an alteration in the state o£ pubHc opinion.

Men were beginning to pluck up courage, but a
curious phase now set in. The old Republican party,
led by such as Lafayette, Lameth and Bailly, had
fallen into disrepute, and there was no properly organ-
ised new Republican party to take its place as yet.

Camille expresses the state of affairs in very plain
and unvarnished terms in the first number of the
"Tribune desPatriotes," published on April 30th, 1792.

" If I go to the Jacobins," he says, " and if I take aside one
of those determined Republicans who always have the word
' Republic ' in their mouths : Brissot or G. Boisguyon, for
example ; if I question him concerning Lafayette, he replies
in my ear : ' Lafayette, I assure you, is more Republican than
Sidney ; a greater Republican than Washington ; he has
absolutely assured me of it a hundred times.' And pressing
my hand : ' Brother, how is it that thou, Camille Desmoulins,
who in " France Libre " didst, the first of all, argue in favour
of the Repubhc ; how is it that to-day, while for Lafayette
nothing will do but the Republic, the whole Republic, and
nothing but the Republic, thou dost insist on marring his task
and decrying it ? ' "

Camille was, at this period, the spokesman in the
Press for Robespierre and his policy, and echoed his
fears of the " Fayettist, Cromwellian republicanism "
— " the aristocratic Republic of La Fayette and his
military government."

As to Camille himself, he is for the Nation, he tells
us ; for the party of the friends of the Constitution.

" The true Jacobins are of this party, because they want not
the name of the Repubhc, but the thing ; because they do not
forget that in the Revolution of 1649 England, under the name
of a Republic, was governed monarchically, or rather as a
mihtary despotism by Cromwell ; and that France in the
Revolution of 1789, though called a Republic, became a
republican government. . . . Heaven preserve us from the
republic of Lafayette ! This word Republic which Cromwell
had everlastingly in his mouth does not deceive me."

174 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

M. Aulard sums up the situation as follows : —

" It is thus that in April and May, 1792, the old Republican
party, however dumb and resigned to the monarchy, was
disowned by its famous chronicler Camille Desmoulins, and
that the republic was denounced as anti-revolutionary by the
most popular and most important of the democrats, Robes-
pierre. After this defection and this anathema people scarcely
dared pronounce the word ' republic,' which is why there was
no republican demonstration on June 20th, 1792."

There is a curious fact to be mentioned in connec-
tion with the short-lived " Tribune des Patriotes."
The joint editors, Camille and Stanislas Freron, asked
Marat to be their collaborator in the publication of
the journal. Such a step as this either points to a real
change in Camille's policy, or to the fact that he was
conscious of the necessity of affecting such a change.

Hitherto there had been little or no pretence of
sympathy between Marat and his younger contempo-
rary. The serious violence of the " Ami du Peuple "
did not appeal to Camille. As a modern writer,
Mr. Philip Gibbs has said : " Desmoulins had none of
this relentlessness of nature. His audacity was in-
tellectual, not instinctive."

Indeed, in the " Revolutions de France et de
Brabant " Camille had frequently employed the power
of his ridicule against Marat, pleading that he must
not be taken seriously and calling him derisively
" Fenfant perdu de la presse patriote," " Cassandre
Marat," " le prophete Marat." Again we find Camille
quoting from a fiery article in the " Ami du Peuple,"
but appending to the extract the following imaginary
conversation : " Who has written this ? " — " Marat."
— " Marat ! at this name terror vanishes — one breathes
again."

A little later the young journalist repudiated Marat's
policy in a more serious and dignified manner. He is
commenting on the demand in the " Ami du Peuple "

THE EAST WIND 175

for " five or six hundred heads " and he concludes his
article by saying : —

" For myself you know that long ago I resigned the post of
Procureur-General to the Lanterne. I think that this great
office, like the dictatorship, ought to last only for a day and
sometimes only for an hour."

A printer's error served to increase Marat's rather
natural rancour against his fellow-journalist. In No.
73 of the " Revolutions " Camille announced that
Marat had demanded a passport " pour aller exercer
I'apostolat de la liberte en Angleterre." By an un-
fortunate mistake the word " apostolat " was printed
" apostat," and as a result Marat inveighed against
Camille for the supposed intentional insult in eight
pages of the " Ami du Peuple."

The younger man answered with cutting scorn in
the next issue of his paper, explaining the mistake, it
is true, but scarcely in a propitiatory manner.

" Listen, Marat," he says. " I permit you to say all the harsh
things to me that you please. You write in a cellar, where the
air is not likely to give you gay ideas. ... I declare to you that
as long as I perceive that you rave in defence of the Revolution
I shall persist in praising you, because I think that we ought to
defend liberty, like the town of St.-Malo, not only with men
but with dogs."

Since Marat made no further protests it would
appear that he tacitly accepted the fact that the error
on this occasion was the fault of the printer. Never-
theless, his anger rankled, and when Freron and
Camille asked for his collaboration, Marat declined
their offer in these words : —

" L'aigle va toujours seul, mais le dindon fait troupe."

In the meantime, the experiment of the Bourgeois
Monarchy had not been successful. The Assembly
could not legislate, because the King had exercised
his power of veto. It was the last relic of power

176 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

which the new Constitution had left to Louis, and it
was only to be expected that he would make use of it.
Indeed, he would have been something less than a
man if, placed as he was, he had not done so.

The first decree which the King vetoed was the
stringent law against the emigrants, a decree which
disinherited Louis' own brother and declared him and
many others guilty of high treason. And secondly, he
vetoed the decree against the non-juring priests, who
had not taken the oath to support the Constitution.

In all things which touched his religion, the King
felt with a strength and fervour which would have been
marked in any age ; at the time in which he lived it
was almost unheard of. He observed the rites and
ceremonies of the Church with a simple piety which
nothing could lessen or alter. It was the same up to
the day of his death ; the religion which could govern
and control his actions during those last terrible weeks
was a real and living thing.

Consequently when the priests, the ministers of his
religion, were threatened, Louis opposed the measure
firmly and definitely. He further vetoed a third
decree by which the Assembly had intended to estab-
lish a large camp of federal volunteers outside Paris.

All this opposition exasperated the people more and
more. Of what use was it, they said, for the King to
accept the Constitution, since he now opposed all the
legislative measures of the Assembly ? The emigrants
and the priests were the enemies of the country. The
King made himself one with them when he supported
their cause.

To add to these internal troubles a new peril from
without threatened France. The Duke of Brunswick,
in command of the armies of the Allies, was mustering
his forces on the frontier. In this strait what would the
King do ? His own brothers were amongst the leaders
of the invading armies ; it was his own people whom
he had sworn to defend, who were about to be invaded.

THE EAST WIND 177

He did that which the country desired of him, but
he did it with an ill grace. With tears in his eyes and
in a broken voice, he announced at the Assembly that
war was declared against the Coalition on April 20th.
He acted at the instigation of the Girondins, who
dominated the Assembly and at this time formed his
ministry.

Louis' nomination of these ministers at the end of
March had been a popular move. For the moment it
had caused a reaction in his favour. The people had
unbounded confidence in Roland as Minister of the
Interior, in Dumouriez at the head of the affairs of
War. According to some historians, Thiers amongst
the number, the Court supported these nominations
because they hoped that the Girondin Ministry would
soon discredit itself and prove to be weak in the face
of danger. If this was indeed the case, their expecta-
tions were doomed to disappointment. As to the
Queen, she probably hoped to find in Dumouriez a
second Mirabeau, another Monk. Indeed, if his
services had been paid for highly enough these hopes
of hers might have been realised.

All through the first six months of 1792 this dis-
content against the King and against the old con-
stitutional revolutionaries grew and increased. We
have seen how Camille voiced it in the four numbers
of the " Tribune des Patriotes." Since that time he
had written little, with the exception of the " Brissot
Demasque."

Nevertheless, he was busy in other ways. Writing
to his father on April 3rd, Camille says that he has
again taken up his ancient profession of the law, to
which he consecrates all the time that is left to him
by his municipal and electoral functions and by the
Jacobins, that is to say, only a very few moments. He
adds vaingloriously : —

*' It is painful to me to plead bourgeois causes after having
been concerned in such great interests and in public affairs
M

178 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

in the face of all Europe. I have held the balance of powers ;
I have raised or abased the chief personages of the Revolution.
Those whom I have abased will never pardon me."

There was much truth in these last words, truth
which was to be brought home forcibly to Camille a
little later.

It seems, then, that the journalist was a very
prominent member of both the Jacobin and Cordelier
Clubs, and it was at this time that these two great
associations became really powerful. They began to
dominate the Assembly instead of merely acting as
forcing-grounds for its orators. Through its affiliated,
branches the Jacobin Club became one of the ruling
powers of France.

The Cordeliers were even more advanced than the
Jacobins, for the moment, and here Danton's was the
dominant personality. The Clubs were working in
conjunction with the sections of Paris and the Muni-
cipality, for the Municipality was now a violently
anti-royalist and democratic body. Bailly and his
supporters no longer held the civic offices. With the
November elections of 1791 a new era had begun, and
Jerome Petion was Mayor, a man immensely popular
with the lower classes of Paris.

Danton was also a corporation official ; as Pro-
curator-Substitute he had larger opportunities than
ever, a wider scope for his talents as an organiser and a
demagogue.

There seems to have been a universal consciousness
throughout Paris that some definite plot was on foot.
Secret committees were formed, but it is difficult to
gather what were their exact aims, or even who com-
posed them. We know that Camille was a member of
one such committee, probably the very same which
assisted to engineer the day of August loth.

The popular demonstration of June 20th was not
in any way organised by those in authority. They
allowed it, it is true, but once it was fairly under way

THE EAST WIND 179

it is probable that the officials were frightened at the
dangerous possibilities of this horde of people who
invaded and overran the Tuileries. At the moment,
as we shall see, the party to which Camille belonged
considered that the time was not ripe for insurrection ;
they were awaiting their opportunity, and any prema-
ture action might ruin all their plans.

The dissatisfaction against the Court party had
grown more pronounced during the third week of
June. In consequence of that ever-recurring veto the
Rolands, husband and wife, had written their famous
and outspoken letter to the King, a letter which one
could scarcely expect the meekest monarch in the
world to receive tamely.

Louis' answer had been for once prompt and to the
point. On June 13th the bulk of the " Patriot
Ministry " were summarily dismissed, much to the
indignation of the people.

The ostensible object of the procession on June 20th
was to plant a tree of Liberty in commemoration of
the anniversary of the " Tennis Court Oath " upon
the terrace of the Feuillants. The object which
certainly seems to have been kept in view by a large
proportion of the mob was to endeavour to intimidate
the King into removing his veto and recalling the
Patriot ministers.

At one time it needed very little to make the crowd
dangerous. Any hesitation or shrinking on the part
of the King, any active reprisals from those who were
still his friends, and the scenes of August loth might
have been enacted before their time, and even more
tragically.

But on June 20th the huge mob were, on the whole,
good-tempered. Above all, the King, to do him
justice, behaved bravely and wisely. He took his stand
in a prominent position, he refused to be intimidated,
he even joked with some of the ringleaders. When the
crowd demanded of him the revocation of his veto, he

i8o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

answered with dignity that this was not the time to
ask it.

When Petion appeared upon the scene, rather late
in the day, Louis gave him to understand clearly
that he considered him, as Mayor, to be responsible
for what had occurred. As a matter of fact, Petion
was immediately afterwards suspended from his office.

Camille took no active part in the demonstration,
but he was present throughout amidst the crowd, and
at the beginning of July he published his views on the
occasion in a pamphlet entitled " Reflexions sur le
20 Juin 1792."

This pamphlet is of great interest, since it shows
that the comparatively conciliatory and temperate
tone of the populace upon June 20th was in accordance,
as we have said, with the policy which the extreme
revolutionaries wished at the moment to pursue.

" It is certain," says Camille, " that all parties desired an
insurrection ; but also that those among the Jacobins who have
hitherto been least deceived in their political judgments upon
men and events were apprehensive of the results of that
insurrection. We saw plainly that violence would only profit
those at Coblenz or Lafayette or other ambitious persons
and would not serve the cause of liberty in the least. ... I
made every possible effort at the Jacobins to secure that this
raising of the shields should not be anything more serious than
a comminatory insurrection. Although I rarely claim my
turn at the Jacobins, I spoke at three consecutive meetings on
the following text : ' Nothing is more likely to ruin the
affairs of the Jacobins than a partial insurrection.' ... I
especially recommended that the insurrection should be calm
and that we should display a profound attachment to the
Constitution. I pointed out that royalty was decaying day
by day, that the life of Louis XVI was valuable to the Jacobins,
that if he died we ought to have him stuffed, as Mirabeau said ;
and that the very best thing which could happen would be
that he should dismiss the Jacobin ministers and send for others
from Coblenz."

Ill

MEANTIME, in spite of all that was pass-
ing in the world of politics, many things
had occurred to absorb Camille in that
other life of his, that home life in which
so much the better side of him appears.

Although his pecuniary circumstances had so much
improved at the time of his marriage, we learn by the
letter to his father on April 3rd, from which we have
already quoted, that Camille was now in want of ready
money. M. Desmoulins, reversing the old condition
of things, had written to his eldest son asking him to
help him in the purchase of the family house at Guise.
Camille excuses himself on the score that since the
discontinuance of his journal he has had no balance in
hand. In fact, as he says, if he only possessed the money
he should have started another paper long before this.
Furthermore, he tells his father that, at the moment,
he needs all the available cash at his disposal.

" At any time now I may have a child, and I feel already the
cares of paternity in the expense of the layette and the tender
solicitude of the mother, who concerns herself with the needs
of her son, and loves him so as almost to make me jealous,"

It is easy to picture Camille's anxiety and excite-
ment as the time for the birth of his child drew near.
He was never a man to take things quietly, least of all
such an event as this.

On July 6th, 1792, at nine o'clock in the morning,
Horace-Camille Desmoulins was born, the baby who
was never really to know either his father or mother,

181

i82 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

who it is scarcely probable could even remember them
in after years. It is possible that " the little Horace "
may have had dim memories of that beautiful young
mother, who must have seemed to his baby brain like
some pictured angel as she bent over his cradle.
Perhaps he vaguely remembered that boyish, excitable
father, with brilliant dark eyes, who would romp with
his " little lizard " in the evenings, rolling with him
on the floor in peals of laughter, while Danton sat by
quietly smiling and thinking of his own boys at the old
home in Arcis-sur-Aube.

There is something very piteous in those words of
Camille's which we shall read in his last letter to
Lucile : " I would have been a good father." It is
easy to believe that this is true : nay, more, it is easy
to believe that he was a good father, as far as was
possible to him during the short time that lay between
the birth of little Horace and his own death.

On July 8th a ceremony took place at the Hotel de
Ville when Camille, escorted by Laurent Lecointre
and Anthoine Merlin (de Thionville) presented his
little son to the Municipality of Paris, as the first child
to be entered in the new civic register of births,
superseding those of parishes. On the birth certificate
Camille wrote with his own hand the following rather
grandiloquent pronouncement : —

" As religious freedom has been decreed by the Constitution
and as by a decree of the Legislative Assembly relative to the
manner of establishing the civil estate of citizens otherwise
than by religious ceremonies, an altar ought to be raised in
each municipality on which a father, accompanied by two
witnesses, can offer his children to the country; the person
present wishing to use the provisions of the law and desiring
to spare himself, one day, on the part of his son, the reproach
of having bound him by oath to reHgious opinions which he
could not yet hold and made him enter on life with an in-
consequent choice between the nine hundred and odd religions
which divide mankind, at a time when he could not even
distinguish his mother."

THE EAST WIND 183

This portentous sentence does more honour to
Camilla's impartiality than to his sense of literary
style ; it is typical, however, o£ a kind of phraseology
which was very prevalent at the time.

Camille's pride in the little boy was unbounded.
He writes enthusiastically to his father on July 9th,
telling him of the event, and concluding : " And I too
have a child ! My only wish is that he may one day
love me as much as I love my father."

Later the baby was sent away to the same nurse at
L'lle Adam (Seine-et-Oise) who had charge of the
little Danton. This was then the invariable practice
with mothers of Lucile's class, and it was perhaps well
that the baby should be far from Paris during the
stress and fury of the next few months. As soon as she
was well enough to be moved Camille took Lucile to
the little honeymoon country house of theirs at
Bourg-la-Reine, and it was here that she remained
with her mother until August 8th.

Camille himself spent most of this time in Paris.
There was much for him to do, for the blazing heat of
that July weather seemed only like a physical sign of
the greater fever within.

The Army of the Allies was gathering upon the
frontier. On July nth was heard for the first time
that ominous declaration decreed by the Assembly :
" Citizens, the Country is in danger ! " Everywhere
men read the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick,
insufferably insolent in tone and wording alike.
Everywhere Royalist cartoons were disseminated, which
held up the Republican party to ridicule. One of
these caricatures must have been intensely irritating to
Camille. It was entitled the " Thaw," and showed the
revolutionaries flying in all directions terrified, while be-
neath their feet the ice of their new world cracked and
broke. Amongst the fugitives " Janot Desmoulins "
was to be seen, wearing the red woollen cap of the
" sansculottes" andimpededby the weight of his lantern.

1 84 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

These and similar insults stirred the Jacobins to
fury : the sections of Paris already displayed a most
threatening spirit.

Baulked in their effort to establish a permanent
camp outside Paris, the Assembly had obtained their
purpose and foiled the King by an adroit counter-
move. From all parts of France little columns of
Federal troops were marching, to take part in the cele-
bration of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille.
By July 14th a large number of these provincials had
arrived.

The King was present at the Festival, but he was
greeted with ominous murmurs, and it was noticed
that he looked pale and sullen. There was a rival King
to receive all the applause of the crowd. Jerome
Petion, the popular idol, was once more reinstated as
Mayor of Paris. He was cheered when he appeared
on the Champ-de-Mars, and men and women wore his
name or his portrait as a badge that day, pinned on
their breasts or in their hats, the word " Petion "
being sometimes coupled with the ominous phrase
' Ou la mort ! "

The presence of the Federal troops in Paris still
further excited the populace. These enthusiastic,
hot-headed provincials from the South and the far
North-West brought a fresh element into the city.
They were like a spark set to dry tinder.

It was not until some days after the Champ-de-
Mars fete, however, that the most important of these
detached bodies of federals arrived in the capital.
This was that little troop of Marseillais patriots, invited
by their fellow-countryman Barbaroux, whom his-
torians, novelists and poets have since made so famous.

These men are sometimes erroneously represented
as belonging to the lowest classes of the community.
In reality they would seem to have been mainly
artisans, retired non-commissioned officers, or men
of even higher rank.'

THE EAST WIND 185

All through the blazing July days they journeyed
northwards, dragging with them two pieces of cannon,
and singing — singing always as they went a new song,
but lately learnt, and which the countryside heard
now for the first time. That song is living yet, with a
mighty power still to stir the nerves and souls of men.
It is known to us now, as it was known then, by the
name of the " Hymn of the Marseillaise."

The Marseillais federals arrived in Paris on July 29th.
At Charenton they were met by Barbaroux, Santerre
and others, who entertained them to dinner at the
inn of the " Cabran d'Or." They received an enthusi-
astic welcome in the capital. The infectious rhythm
of their song was to be heard in every street, voicing
the surging discontent in men's hearts.

The men of Marseilles fraternised with their
comrades from Brest and Calvados, fraternised too
with their poorer brothers of the fauxbourgs St.
Antoine and St. Marceau. There were public feasts
on the site of the heretofore Bastille, much dancing,
and speeches no doubt from Barbaroux and Fauchet,
the ex-bishop of Calvados.

And under it all, beneath this effervescing surface, a
plan was working, a great organised plot was being
formed which would presently take shape and action.
The leaders of the Revolution were about to make use
of the power of the people, for the insurrection of
August loth was essentially a popular movement, a
movement not of any one section, or body of men,
but of Paris, nay, of France itself, led and organised
by the Municipality of the capital city.

We may be practically certain that Camille was very
deeply involved in the preparations for the day of
August loth. We know that Danton was the great
mover in the insurrection, later he was to glory in that
fact. Camille's association with Danton was very
close at this time, all the more so, because Robespierre,
his other chief ally, kept almost entirely in the back-

1 86 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

ground. This attitude o£ Robespierre's has been the
subject of much comment from his apologists and
enemies alike, and many suggestions have been brought
forward to account for his withdrawal from public
affairs at this juncture.

The most probable hypothesis would seem to be that
Robespierre was afraid. Not that he was exactly a
coward. He forced himself to act with both moral
and physical courage on many occasions, but there was
a timid strain in his nature against which he could not
always contend.

We can gather very little concerning the events of
August and the part which he played in them from
Camille's own writings. He scarcely mentions the
insurrection in his letters to his father, and he was, of
course, at the moment editing no journal in which to
record his personal impressions.

During the first week of August he wrote to Lucile,
who was still at Bourg-la-Reine, a letter which tells
us something of his own doings.

" My good Lucile," he says, " don't cry, I beg, because
you do not see your Monsieur Hon. I am up to the neck
in the Revolution. How you would have been pleased to
see me in the municipal cavalcade. This was the first time I
played a part in public ; I was as proud as Don Quixote.
Nevertheless, my good Rouleau, my Cachan hen, was sitting
up behind me. My God, don't love me so much, sweetheart,
since it makes you suffer such a lot. I dined at Robespierre's
to-day and talked ever so much about Rouleau, Rouleau, my
poor Rouleau. Now, I am finishing my speech, for I am told
off to read it to the Municipality on Tuesday. The Rentiers
of the general council are desperately frightened by a few words
which I spoke yesterday in the Tribune, and which were much
applauded.

" I have consecrated my day by proclaiming on my horse
in the midst of three thousand National Guards and twenty
pieces of cannon, the danger of the Fatherland. I do not dare
to talk to you about the baby, lest I should bring the tears to
your eyes. It is eleven o'clock. I write so that you may have

THE EAST WIND 187

my letter to-morrow ; I am going to rest, but you will not lay
your arm round my neck. I shall make haste with my speech
that I may fly to your arms. Adieu, my good angel, my
Lolotte, mother of the little lizard. Kiss Daronne and Horace
for me."

This letter, tender and playful as it is, would
certainly seem to show that Camille was taking a
fairly prominent part in public affairs. The speech
which he mentions to Lucile is extant, and proves
definitely that a decisive blow was meditated and even
spoken of openly without concealment. After pro-
claiming in eloquent language his dreams of universal
brotherhood, of fraternity between the " disdainful
bourgeois " and the proletariat, Camille concludes with
these bold words : —

" So soon as the tocsin is sounded let all the nation assemble ;
let each man, as in Rome, be invested with the right to punish
known conspirators with death ; and one single day of anarchy
will do more for the security of liberty and the salvation of the
country than four years of a National Assembly."

" The right to punish known conspirators with
death." It is probable that Camille lived to regret
those words of his — words which were translated into
practice in the days of the September massacres.

After this letter, written some days before the
insurrection, we learn practically nothing from Camille
himself as to his doings, until after the downfall of the
monarchy. But the blank in the husband's writings
is filled in by the wife. Lucile Desmoulins had kept a
diary from her earliest girlhood, and at this time it is
of inestimable value, since it helps us to know how the
events of August 9th and loth affected her and Camille.

We cannot do better than give here the passages
in that manuscript pocket-book of Lucile's which
refer to these days. Her vivid, simple words, the little
homely details which no imagination could invent,
enable us to picture the scenes of that terrible time

1 88 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

far better than could be done with the aid of volumes
of descriptive writing.

As we have already said, Lucile had been staying at
Bourg-la-Reine for some weeks past. It was on August
8th that she returned to Paris.

" August 9th, 1792. What will become of us ? I can
endure no more. Camille, O my poor Camille, what will
become of you ? I have no strength to breathe. This night,
this fatal night ! O God, if it be true that thou hast any
existence, save the men who are worthy of Thee. We want to
be free. O God, the cost of it ! As a climax to my misery,
courage abandons me.

" What a gap since the 9th of August ! What things have
happened ! What a volume I should have filled if I had con-
tinued ! How can I recall so many events ? Never mind, I
am going to remember something of what passed.

" I had come back from the country on August 8th. The
pubhc mind was already in a ferment. An attempt had been
made to assassinate Robespierre. On the 9th I had some of the
Marseillais to dinner and we amused ourselves pretty well.
After dinner we all went to Danton's. The mother was crying ;
she looked very sad ; the child had a bewildered look. Danton
was resolute. As to me, I laughed like a madcap. They were
afraid the affair would not take place. Although I was not at
all sure, I said to them, as if I knew all about it, that it would
come to pass.

" ' How can anyone laugh like that ? ' Madame Danton said.

" ' Alas,' I replied, ' it is a sign that I shall shed many tears
this evening.'

" We were to take Madame Charpentier home that night.
The weather was fine ; we strolled about the street ; it was
crowded with people. We returned and seated ourselves outside
the cafe.* Many sansculottes passed crying : ' Long live the
Nation ! ' then cavalry, afterwards immense crowds. Fear
seized me. I said to Madame Danton : ' Let us go.' She
laughed at my dread, but, by dint of speaking of it, she was
frightened in her turn, and we departed. I said to her mother :
' Good-bye, it will not be long before you hear the tocsin.'

* Gabrielle Charpentier, Danton's iirst wife, was the daughter of
the keeper of the Cafe des Ecoles.

THE EAST WIND 189

On arriving at the Dantons' rooms, I saw there Madame
Robert and many others.

" Very soon I saw that they were arming themselves.
Camille, my dear Camille, came in with a gun. O God !
I hid myself in an alcove ; I covered my face with my two
hands and began to weep ; however, as I did not want to show
so much weakness, or to tell Camille aloud that I did not wish
him to mix himself up with all this, I watched for a moment
when I might speak to him without being overheard and tell
him all my fears. He reassured me by saying that he would
not leave Danton. I have learnt since then that he exposed
himself to danger.

" Danton was agitated. I ran to Madame Robert saying :
' Will they sound the tocsin ? ' ' Yes,' she said to me. ' It will
be to-night.' I heard all this and did not say a word.

" Freron had the air of one determined to perish. ' I am
tired of life,' said he. ' I only seek to die.' Each patrol which
came, I thought to see them for the last time, I went to conceal
myself in the salon, which was unlighted, that I might not see
all these preparations. Nobody in the street. All the world
had retired. Our patriots departed. I was seated near a bed,
overwhelmed, bewildered, dozing sometimes, and when I
wished to speak, I wandered. Danton went to lie down. He
did not appear to be much concerned ; he scarcely ever went
out. Midnight approached. They came to seek him many
times ; at last he departed for the Couimune.

" The tocsin of the Cordeliers rang ; it rang for a long time.
Alone, bathed in tears, on my knees by the window, my face
covered with my handkerchief, I listened to the sound of that
fatal bell. In vain they tried to console me. The day which
had preceded this fatal night seemed to me to have been my
last.

" Danton returned. Madame Robert, who was very troubled
concerning her husband, who had gone to the Luxembourg,
where he had been sent by his section, ran to Danton, who
only replied to her very vaguely. He threw himself upon his
bed.

" They came many times to give us good and bad news. I
thought I saw their project was to go to the Tuileries. I said
so, sobbing. I felt as though as I should faint. In vain Madame
Robert demanded news of her husband ; no one could give
any. She believed that he would march with the faubourg.

190 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

' If he perishes,' she said to me, ' I will not survive him. But
this Danton — ^he is the rallying-point ! If my husband
perishes, I am the woman to stab him ! ' Her eyes rolled ;
from that moment I never quitted her. How could I tell what
might happen ? How did I know of what she was capable ?

" We passed the night thus in cruel agitations. Camille
returned at one o'clock ; he slept leaning upon my shoulder.
Madame Danton sat beside me, and seemed prepared to hear
of the death of her husband. ' No,' she said to me, ' I cannot
remain here,' Daylight being come, I proposed that she should
rest near me. Camille lay down on the bed. I put a couch
in the salon, with a mattress and a quilt; she threw herself
upon it and took some repose. For myself, I lay down and
dozed, although the sound of the tocsin was heard on all sides.

" We rose ; Camille departed, leaving me in the hope that
he would not expose himself. We ate some breakfast. Ten
o'clock, eleven o'clock passed, without our knowing anything.
We took some of the journals of the evening before and tried
to read them, seated upon the sofa in the salon. As she read
me an article, it seemed to me that a cannon was fired. I heard
soon many more shots without saying anything ; they became
more frequent. I said to her : ' They are firing cannon ! '
She listened, she heard, and growing as pale as death, she
fainted away. I loosened her clothes. Myself, I was ready to
fall unconscious, but the necessity of helping her gave me
strength. She came to herself. Jeannette cried like a mad
thing. She wished to thrash a passer-by who said that Camille
was the cause of all this. We heard crying and weeping in the
street, we believed that Paris was full of bloodshed.

" We encouraged each other and we departed to go and seek
out Danton. They cried : ' To arms ! ' and ran hither and
thither. We found the door of the Cour de Commerce closed.
We knocked and shouted, but nobody came to open it. We
wished to get out through a baker's shop ; he shut the door in
our faces. I was furious ; at last they let us through. We
were a long time without knowing anything. However, they
came to tell us that we were victors. At one o'clock several
came to relate what had passed. Some of the Marseillais had
been killed. But the accounts were cruel.

" Camille arrived and told me that the first head which he
had seen fall was that of Suleau. Robert was at the Hotel de
Ville, and had before him the frightful spectacle of the

THE EAST WIND 191

massacred Swiss, He came after dinner and told us a fearful
account of what he had seen, and all day long we heard of
nothing else, save what had happened.

" The following day, the eleventh, we saw the convoy of the
Marseillais. O God, what a sight ! Our hearts were torn.
Camille and I slept with the Roberts that night. I do not
know why I was so frightened ; it seemed to me that we
should not be safe at home. The next day, the twelfth, on our
return I learnt that Danton was made Minister."

Such an account as this of Lucile Desmoulins needs
no comment. It is as though the girl spoke to us
herself in those simple, unaffected sentences. We feel
as though we saw Lucile before us in the Dantons'
room that terrible evening, laughing like a madcap,
because if she did not laugh, she needs must weep.
There is something extraordinarily lovable in that
tender tactfulness which would not make Camille
appear foolish by imploring him, in the presence of
his friends, to be careful. It speaks worlds for the
confidence which they all felt in Danton that Lucile
appears to have been almost reassured on hearing
that her husband would not leave that strong, trusty
friend of his, although this certainly did not infer
that Camille would thereby be kept out of danger's
way.

After all, these pages from the young wife's diary,
showing a great episode of history from the point of
view of the women who waited to hear the upshot of
the fight, is of greater interest than any cut-and-dried
description. It is so plain throughout that, for the
moment, Lucile Desmoulins, Gabrielle Danton and
Madame Robert cared very little what was to be the
issue of the day. What mattered it if their cause was
won, if it meant the loss of their husbands ? For
women are made like that.

As to the actual details of the attack upon the
Tuileries on August loth, one may read of it in the
pages of a hundred historians of every possible shade

igz CAMILLE DESMOULINS

of opinion. We know how in great surges the men of
the fauxbourgs beat against the Palace, led hy the
Federals of Brest and Marseilles. We have heard how
the King vacillated, countermanded his own orders,
finally took refuge with the Assembly, accompanied
by his whole family. We know of that reiterated
command of his that the Swiss Guard were not to
fire on the people, a command well meant, no doubt,
but which spelt sheer murder as far as these faithful
servants of his were concerned.

Best knowledge of all, we have each one of us read
how the Swiss died, faithful to the last, falling where
they made their last stand on the great staircase of the
Tuileries. Their memorial is written on the pages of
history ; it is written even more imperishably in
stone by the shores of the blue lake in the land of their
birth.

We can learn little or nothing of Camille's exact
share in the fight, although we know that he took an
active part. Since he was with Danton, he was
probably in the forefront of the attack ; beyond that
we can gather few details.

There is one story of his conduct which appears to
be well authenticated and which one would certainly
like to believe was true. It is quoted in F. Hamel's
life of Theroigne de Mericourt.

In spite of their violently opposed opinions, in spite
of their jeers and scoffs at each other in their respective
papers, it would seem that Camille and Suleau, once
school-fellows, now brother journalists, had always
remained friends. It is said that Suleau told an
acquaintance named La Sourd on the morning of
August 9th that Camille had just warned him of the
extreme danger which he (Suleau) ran. The Revolu-
tionary journalist, as one of the organisers of the
movement, of course realised only too well the
imminent peril of the hot-headed Royalist writer.
Acting on a generous and almost quixotic impulse,

THE EAST WIND 193

Camille invited his old school friend to take refuge
with him until the danger should be past. Suleau
refused the offer, and, as is well known, he was assassi-
nated by Theroigne de Mericourt on the morning
of August loth. Lucile tells us, as we have seen, that
Camille actually witnessed the murder. Furthermore,
she says that her husband observed to Suleau the day
before : " You are going to fight for the King to-
morrow ; then you will be hanged."

After the sack of the Tuileries Palace Lucile was
brought her share of the spoil. She tells us that she
received some of the articles from the unfortunate
Queen's toilet-table, such as brushes, mirrors and
sponges. In common with many men and women of
her time and class, Camille's young wife had hitherto
felt an almost impersonal hatred of Marie-Antoinette ;
now, for the first time, she seems to have been touched
wth pity.

Indeed, what wife and mother as tender-hearted as
was Lucile could have failed to pity the misfortunes
of that sorrowful woman, a queen no longer.

IV

I

"^HE French Monarchy had fallen once and
for all. Henceforth there was no more
question of reinstating Louis as King. He
and his whole family were literally im-
prisoned now in the Tower of the Temple, as they
had been for long prisoners in reality in the more
splendid dungeon of the Tuileries.

It remained now to decide what was to be done with
this heretofore King of France, from henceforth to
be named only " Citizen Capet." This decision,
together with many others, did not rest with the
present Assembly, nor with the Revolutionary
Commune, now masters of Paris. It would be the
task of the National Convention, so soon to be
elected, to resolve upon the fate of the King and
his family.

Meanwhile France must be governed, and to that
end a Provisional Executive Council was formed on
August 13th, beginning its functions on that day. It
consisted of six ministers, each of whom presided for a
week in turn as President. These Ministers were
chosen by the Legislative Assembly, and the first to be
elected was Danton, as Minister of Justice. The
other members of the Council were Monge, Minister
of Marine, Lebrun, who was responsible for Foreign
Affairs, Roland, for those of the Interior, Servan,
Minister of War, and Claviere, at the Ministry of the
Bureau of Public Taxes.

During the short time that he held office, Danton
was the real head of the Executive Council, and the

194

THE EAST WIND 195

meetings were held at his quarters in the Ministry of
Justice.

Danton named Camille as his Secretary-General,
and the journalist at once took up the duties o£ that
post. He speaks of his new position in an almost
despondent fashion, in spite of his obvious pride,
when he writes to his father on August 15 th.

" You have learnt from the journals the news of August loth.
It only remains for me to tell you of that which concerns
myself. My friend, Danton, has become Minister of Justice,
by the grace of the cannon ; this bloody day meant for both of
us that we should rise or fall together. He said in the National
Assembly : ' If I had been vanquished, I should have been a
criminal.'

" The cause of liberty has triumphed. Behold me living in
the Palace of Maupeou and of Lamoignon. In spite of all your
predictions that I should never do anything, I see myself raised
to the topmost rung of the ladder attainable by one of our
profession, and far from being more vain, I am much less so
than ten years ago, because I value much less than then, the
imagination, the warmth, the talent and the patriotism,
which I did not distinguish from the sensibility, the humanity
and the love of one's kind that the years lessen. They have
not cooled in me my filial love, and your son, become secretary-
general of the department of justice and that which one calls
secretary to the seals, hopes not to be long before he gives you
the marks of this. I believe liberty to be ensured by the
revolution of the loth of August. It remains for us to render
France happy and flourishing as well as free. It is to this that
I am about to consecrate my night watches."

Later Camille cannot resist a little outburst of
triumph, when he thinks of the way in which he has
vindicated himself before his fellow-townsfolk.

" How the people of Guise, so full of envy, hatred and petty
passions, will burst with bitterness to-day ! "

But afterwards comes the strange note of despon-
dency : " It has but rendered me more than ever
melancholy and anxious and made me feel more keenly

196 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

all the ills of my fellow-citizens and the miseries of
human life."

In connection with Camille's nomination as Secre-
tary to the Minister of Justice, a curious incident and
one characteristic of the time is related by M. Lenotre
in his volume " The Tribunal of the Terror."

He publishes a letter written to Camille immedi-
ately after August loth by Fouquier-Tinville. The
future Public Prosecutor of evil notoriety appeals to
the young man as his " dear relative " (it appears
that they were distantly related through the family of
de Viefville), and implores him to help the writer to
obtain a government post of some description.

It is very probable that Camille was instrumental
in securing for him the position of Public Prosecutor,
the duties of which Fouquier took up at about this
time. It is a curious example of the irony of fate,
when one thinks that it may have been Camille
himself who procured for his humble relation that
office, wherein Fouquier was mainly instrumental in
obtaining the condemnation of the Dantonists.

The question whether or no Camille was involved
in the prison massacres of September 2nd and 3rd is
subsidiary to the larger issue of Danton's implication.
As Minister of Justice and as Camille's superior alike,
the greater share of responsibility rests with him.

Contemporary writers and a large number of
modern historians consider Danton as responsible for
the massacres, and even as their prime mover. So
great an authority as Lord Acton himself takes this
view, although he writes of the affair as a concerted
plan on the part of the Government.

Several of Danton's biographers, however, and
notably Mr. H. Belloc, have almost conclusively proved
that the Minister of Justice took no active part what-
ever in the organisation of the massacres. Mr. Belloc
brings forward very strong evidence to show that the
circular letter, which, stamped as it was with the

THE EAST WIND 197

impress of the Ministry of Justice, has always been
considered to prove Danton's comphcity in the plot,
was written on paper stolen for the purpose from the
Minister's office. He believes that this letter, which
was sent throughout the provinces to incite to further
massacres, was compiled by a committee mainly inspired
by Marat.

The real truth would seem to be that Danton tacitly
permitted the massacres, although he did not himself
organise them. Possibly he felt himself to be powerless
in the matter, and feared to lose his influence with the
people if he interfered with their frightful vengeance.
The country was in the most terrible and imminent
danger ; he may have believed, with the mob, that
there was real peril from the plots of the imprisoned
aristocrats. All the thoughts and actions of the
Minister of Justice at this moment were directed
towards the defeat of the enemy who was advancing
towards Paris. In person he superintended the
business of enlistment and harangued the people,
stirring them up by the dominating power of his
personality and his fiery, inspiring phrases. It was at
this time that he thundered out those memorable
words which have echoed down through history : —

" Pour les vaincre, pour les atterer, que faut-il ? De
I'audace, encore de I'audace, et toujours I'audace ! "

In any case it is scarcely possible to believe, with
Lord Acton, that the work of murder was performed
by men paid directly by the governing body of Paris.
Paid they may have been, and no doubt were, but may
they not have received their wages from the Committee
which engineered the massacres and sent out the
circulars purporting to emanate from the Ministry of
Justice ?

What we have said of Danton applies to Camille in
a minor degree. He was the Minister's Secretary, and
probably shared his policy with regard to the prison

198 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

massacres. We have no means of ascertaining what
his private opinion concerning them may have been,
but it must be confessed that his pamphlet on the
events of June 20th, from which we have already
quoted, indirectly advocated such a method of popular
vengeance as that which was so terribly carried out
on September 2nd and 3rd.

It is almost certain that Danton and Camille alike
later felt themselves to have been morally responsible
for the massacres. The epithet of " Septembriseur "
had the power to make Danton falter to the day of his
death ; he could not hear it applied to him, with a
conscience clear of guilt.

Mr. Philip Gibbs has put the case well and im-
partially in one of his studies of the principal person-
ages of the French Revolution.

" Danton must be blamed," he says, " like Desmoulins and
Marat, for violence of speech which led to atrocious actions
. . . for working upon the imagination of a people already
hysterical with fear and hatred, and afterwards for condoning
and slurring over atrocities which dragged the revolutionary
ideals of liberty and justice through the shambles of barbarous
revenge. . . . Judging them with as much knowledge of the
facts as history affords us, we may acquit Danton and Des-
moulins of murderous design, though not of bloodguiltiness."

Camille did not retain for very long his official
position at the Ministry of Justice. Together with
Danton himself, he was anxious to be elected as
Deputy to the National Convention which was to open
at the end of September. The nominations for the
new Assembly took place at the beginning of the
month, and on September 8th Camille was elected
as one of the deputies for Paris, although not without
some opposition. It was only after two ballots that he
obtained the majority of votes over Kersaint.

Camille seems to have taken his new position very
seriously — more seriously perhaps than his constituents
expected of him. In his " Fragment de I'Histoire

THE EAST WIND 199

Secrete de la Revolution " he describes his feelings at
the opening of the new assembly.

Those are indeed to be envied, he says, who have
just been named deputies to the Convention. Was
there ever a more magnificent mission, a more splendid
opportunity of glory ? It is their task to punish the
tyrant, to build a constitution, to defeat the nations
of Europe, finally to " make a people." Certainly
this is no light or superficial view of the situation.

It was about this time that, according to Roland's
" Appeal," Danton proposed to Roland, the Minister
of the Interior, to institute a journal for the purpose
of biassing the public mind in the direction which the
then government wished. This periodical was to
have been edited by Camille, but the plan never
materialised.

The National Convention met for the first time on
September 20th. It had been elected by almost
absolute universal suffrage in accordance with a law
passed by the Legislative Assembly on August loth.
Although its numbers were by no means complete
on the opening date, the Convention immediately
proceeded to the most important measures possible.

It decreed on September 21st that Royalty was
abolished in France, and on the following day the
Republic was proclaimed. Both these measures were
afterwards submitted to the ratification of the people,
by means of a referendum, and were accepted by a
majority of votes.

It was thus that the first French Republic was
created, without any extraordinary enthusiasm, but
also without any active opposition. On September
25th Danton gave a great and lasting title to the new
government when he proposed the motion that " the
French Republic is one and undivisible."

In the middle of September we learn that Camille
was appointed by the Provisional Executive Council
to inspect the district of Laon, Guise and Soissons,

200 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

but we cannot find that he really ever undertook
this mission, in fact, it is practically certain that he did
not leave Paris for any period, however short.

Camille's old journal, the " Revolutions de France
et de Brabant," reappeared for a short time in October
of this year under the editorship of Merlin (de Thion-
ville). Camille seems to have taken the position of a
kind of leader-writer on the staff of the paper, but very
little of the old spirit was revived with the name, and
it was plain from the first that it could not hope for a
long life.

The violent tone of the journal can be judged by one
example. It bore as its epigraph a quotation from
Seneca : " Victima haud ulla amplior potest magisque
opima mactari Jovi quam rex," which may be roughly
translated as follows : " There is no victim more
agreeable to Jupiter than a king as the sacrifice."

A few numbers only of the journal appeared, and
they have little value or interest. It is evident,
however, that Camille was considered to share with
Merlin the responsibility of the production, for one
of the few monarchical journals of that day, the short-
lived " Journal Frangais," contains the following
reference to the " Revolutions de France " in its first
number, dated November 15th, 1792, and addressed
to the Society of Jacobins : —

" Brothers and friends, you are sovereigns, because you say
so every day in your tribune ; you are wise, because brothers
Merlin and Desmoulins give a journal gratis, v\hich calls forth
the admiration of the eighty-three departments and of all
Europe."

And now the shadow of a great duty to be performed
hung over the National Convention. They must
decide upon the fate of Louis XVI.

It was in the debates on this question that the first
signs of a division in the Convention began to appear.
The party of the Mountain, which had been com-

THE EAST WIND 201

paratively weak in the Legislative Assembly, had now
assumed formidable proportions and could contend on
equal terms with the powerful Girondin faction. It
is misleading, however, to imagine these two parties
as being opposed to one another in their ideas of
the Republic. This misconception, nevertheless, has
become very general. People are apt to think of the
Girondins as being essentially moderate and constitu-
tional in their aims, almost monarchical in fact, whilst
the Montagnards stand for extreme democracy and
terrorism. This conception is very wide of the mark.
The two parties were equally republican in their
aims and ideals ; it was another question which
separated them. M. Aulard sums up the situation
very clearly when he says that the essential difference
between the Montagnards and the Girondins was that
the former wished to see Paris provisionally, during the
war, at the head of the united Republic ; the latter
did not wish the capital to exert any supremacy over
the departments, even in time of war.

The first sign of a split in the Convention appeared,
as we have said, with respect to this question of the
King's trial. Without being more inclined than the
Montagnards to show clemency towards Louis, the
Girondins wished to appeal to the people in general
and thus ascertain their views on the subject, whilst
the Mountain contended that the Convention alone
had full power to try and to condemn the King.

The trial began on December nth, and was con-
ducted with a certain amount of dignity and order ;
it is evident that the Convention had in mind the pro-
cess and condemnation of Charles I.

As to Louis, he bore himself throughout with great
courage, although from the first it is plain he had small
hope that his life would be spared. During the long
trial most of the leading orators of the Convention
set forth their views with regard to the sentence which
was to be passed upon the King. Camille had rightly

202 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

no confidence in his own powers as a speaker. He
accordingly put into writing his " Opinion upon the
Judgment of Louis XVI."

The power of his pen was never used to worse pur-
pose, except perhaps in his attacks upon Brissot and the
Girondin party. One would think that the writer was
impelled by malignity against the man, as well as wrath
against the King, and his vituperation is even womanish
in its inconsequence.

Still it is only fair to Camille to remember that he
was not alone in this almost personal feeling of hatred
towards Louis. The King had been culpably, crimin-
ally weak, and it is perhaps little to be wondered at
that this criminality was imputed more to malice than
to lack of strength.

The Constitution had set it down that the person of
the King was inviolable, but Camille argues that the
primitive code of nations decrees that no law is law
until it is freely subscribed to by the people. He con-
tends that the populace had never agreed to this law
of inviolability. In fact, they protested against it after
the return from Varennes in the famous Petition of the
Champ-de-Mars, the signing of which, as he says, was
only partly prevented by the massacre of patriots.

Furthermore, Camille considers that if there had
been a contract between the King and the people this
would have become null, owing to the repeated
" treasons " of the King, one of the contracting
parties. Therefore the writer considers that, as
King, Louis is worthy of death.

So far, according to the spirit of the times, Camille
is not illogical. It is the second part of his argument
that posterity will scarcely accept.

He contends that Louis must also be punished as a
criminal. True, he concedes, that, from some points
of view, one cannot altogether compare him with
Nero, but he accuses him in no measured terms of
treason and of treason which puts him outside the law.

THE EAST WIND 203

He ought, therefore, to be punished as an outlaw, and
as one more culpable than the lowest brigand or robber,
for, as Camille observes, one still finds honour amongst
thieves.

Camille scoffs at the idea of there being any difficulty
as to who should judge the King ; it is the sovereign
people who must do this thing, through their repre-
sentatives. They have arrogated to themselves the
duty of judging others, therefore they can judge
Louis Capet.

" It is evident that the people have sent us here to judge the
King, and to give them a Constitution."

Camille concludes, in correct classical fashion, by
comparing the Deputies of the Convention to the
Consul Brutus, who did not shrink from condemning
his own son to death. Shall they, the representatives
of the people, prove themselves less worthy than he by
hesitating to judge a far greater criminal ?

Camille did not pause here. His rancour against
Louis was not yet satisfied. This " Opinion " of his
is almost moderate in tone when we compare it with
a motion he presented at this time to the National
Convention.

The violence of his language on this occasion is quite
indefensible, at least if we are to judge the men of
that day by the ordinary rules which govern conduct
amongst a civilised people.

Camille's motion was as follows : —

" The National Convention decrees that Louis Capet de-
serves to die. It decrees that the scaffold shall be erected in
the Place de Carrousel, whither Louis shall be conducted,
wearing on his breast these words : ' Perjurer and Traitor to
the Nation,' and on his back another label bearing the word
' King,' in order to show the world that the degradation of
nations cannot efface the crimes committed by royalty, even
after the lapse of fifteen centuries ; it also decrees that the
tomb of the Kings at St. Denis shaU henceforth be the burial-
place of thieves, murderers and traitors."

204 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Vindictiveness towards a fallen foe could scarcely
go farther than this.

The long trial of the King came to an end at last. It
now only remained for the members of the Convention
to record their votes on three successive questions.

Firstly, whether Louis Capet was guilty or not
guilty. On this count the verdict was unanimous, or
practically so ; with no dissentient voice the Con-
vention made answer : " He is guilty."

With regard to the second question, whether there
should be an appeal to the people or no, the Montag-
nard vote prevailed over that of the Girondins. There
was a majority of two to one against the referendum.

On the following day, Wednesday, January loth, the
voting began on the last and most important question
— what punishment ?

It was not until eight o'clock in the evening that
they actually began to vote, after a day spent in argu-
ment and debate as to what majority should be
required to decide the matter. All through the dark
hours of that winter night, all through the next day
and night the voting continued. The seven hundred
and forty-nine members of the Convention who were
present mounted one by one to the Tribune and re-
corded their votes, sometimes accompanying their
bare statement with a speech in explanation or
vindication of their opinion.

From one of the galleries in the hall a group of
painted, gaily dressed women, the friends of
" Equality " Orleans, listened to the voting, with
laughing comments on the grim ceremonial. They
held little cards inscribed with the names of the
deputies, and as these names were called and the vote
was given, they pricked it off in one column or the
other. Bets were interchanged between these women
and the deputies and their friends, who came and went
amongst them, bets as to whether Capet would
eventually escape, as to how such and such a one would

THE EAST WIND 205

vote. They ate oranges and sweetmeats whilst they
waited — and the fate of a King hung in the balance.

All the world knows the final verdict — that verdict
which the Girondin, Vergniaud, pronounced as
President of the Convention, in a voice which, men
said, sounded as though conscience-stricken.

" I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the punish-
ment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of death."

Camille gave his vote in the terms which one would
naturally expect after reading his " Opinion." Yet
he had but lately received a letter from his father in
which M. Desmoulins gravely and solemnly warned
his son against voting for the death of the King.

" If I were you, I should say," writes the elder man, " ' I
am a Republican in feeling and in act and have given proof of
it. I was one of the first and most eager to denounce Louis
XVI ; and for these very reasons, I decline to vote.' "

In spite of this warning, Camille recorded his vote
for death, and in no dubious phrases. These are the
exact words which he used.

" Manuel, in his ' Opinion ' of the month of November,
said : ' A King dead is not a man the less.' I vote for death,
perhaps too late for the honour of the National Convention."

So on that bitter, frost-bound day at the end of
January, the sacrifice which Camille had helped with
all his powers to bring about was consummated. With
no great show of stoicism — for he was never a romantic
figure— but with a simple piety which was far better
than any heroics, Louis XVI, King of France and
Navarre, met his death.

To his son he left a noble testament — the command
to forgive his own enemies and those of his father. The
words which he would have spoken to his people were
drowned in the roll of drums. In the pages of history
Louis has inscribed his name, haltingly and unevenly,
as a good man, but a bad king.

IT was a bitter wind which directed the course
of the self-named weathercock during those
first nine months of 1793. Camille had been
one of the instruments to slay the King. Now,
he was to assist, with that cruel pen of his, in the
downfall of a man, once his intimate friend, and of
a party who, well directed, might have been the
salvation of France.

We have already seen how the quarrel between
Camille and Brissot began. The former had neither
forgotten nor forgiven the injury which he considered
himself to have sustained. He had given one retaliating
thrust already, in the " Brissot Demasque " ; he only
bided his time to wound his adversary yet more
deeply.

Meantime, all Europe was stunned with horror at
the news of the execution of Louis. No one had
realised that the Convention would dare to go so far.
No one had believed that the spirit must be taken
literally which had inspired Danton with those terrible
words : —

" The coalised Kings threaten us ; we hurl at their feet, as
gage of battle, the head of a King ! "

Monsieur, the Count of Provence, proclaimed
himself regent for the boy-king, Louis XVII, on Jan-
uary 28th, and in the wording of this proclamation
showed more than the usual Bourbon incapacity to
learn wisdom. He stated that his desire and intention
was to re-establish the old order of things, pure and

206

THE EAST WIND 207

simple, and thereby did enormous harm to the royal
cause.

There was a practically unanimous declaration of war
from the European powers, a declaration which the
new Republic accepted, nay, which, in more than one
instance, she forestalled. And while the Armies of
the Coalition threatened the northern and eastern
frontiers of France, in the early spring of 1793 civil
war broke out within her boundaries.

Royalist La Vendee had long been smouldering in
rebellion, and the revolt broke into flame when the
Convention endeavoured to enforce the great national
levy of troops in this province.

It was on March 8th that all the external and
internal troubles seemed to come to a climax. There
was bad news from the frontier, where Dumouriez
hesitated on the brink of treason ; there was bad news
from La Vendee, where the untrained Royalist troops
were assuming a rough kind of organisation, under their
own peasant leaders and a few impoverished seigneurs.

In Paris, the internal quarrels of the Convention
were growing more and more persistent. When on
this 8th of March Danton rose in the Assembly to plead
that the representatives should cease from discord,
should lay aside their quarrels and join in the defence
of the Fatherland, he put into words a national
necessity.

As usual Danton carried public opinion with him.
On the Hotel de Ville, the black flag proclaimed that
the " Fatherland was in Danger ! " and the sections
sat in permanence to enrol recruits. The Girondins
alone were uncertain and doubtful ; they found it
literally impossible to join whole-heartedly with the
" Mountain." They temporised and waited, whilst
the populace murmured against them.

Nevertheless, for the moment the indignation against
Brissot and his party subsided, without resulting in
open strife.

2o8 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

On March loth the Convention took a very im-
portant step. It decreed, on Danton's motion, that :
" There should be estabHshed in Paris a Criminal
Tribunal extraordinary ; which vi^ould deal with all
counter-revolutionary undertakings, and all attempts
upon the liberty, equality, unity and indivisibility of
the Republic, the internal and external safety of the
state and all conspiracies tending to re-establish
Royalty, or to establish any other authority injurious
to liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people."

Thus was instituted the famous Revolutionary
Tribunal, which exactly a year later was to arraign
before its bar the very man who had caused it to be
created. Revolutionary Tribunals had already existed,
notably that one which had been formed to try those
involved in the affair of August loth, but these were
merely temporary creations. This was the great
Tribunal which was to become such a terrible and
deadly weapon in the hands of the Committee of
Public Safety.

It was on March 25th that this all-powerful Com-
mittee was formed. At first it was known as the
Committee of General Defence, continuing the title
of one which had been in existence since January 3rd,
1793. It consisted of twenty-five members, of whom
Camille was one.

In this form the Committee executed nothing of
particular interest. It only existed until April 5th,
when it was dissolved and replaced by a Commission
of Execution, which, on April 6th, took the name of
the Committee of Public Safety. Under this name,
although at various times reconstituted, the great
Commitee governed France to all intents and purposes
until the establishment of the Directory.

There was an indirect thrust against Brissot and his
party in a measure which was passed in the Convention
on March 29th and which decreed that : " Whosoever
should be convicted of having composed or printed

THE EAST WIND 209

works or writings which might provoke the dissolution
of the National Representation, the re-establishment
of Royalty or of any other power injurious to the
sovereignty of the people," should be found guilty of
treason against the Nation.

Again on April 5th another decisive move was taken
against the Girondins. The Jacobins, with Marat as
President, signed a circular proclaiming the necessity
of proscribing the Girondin Deputies as " traitors,
Royalists and inept." This address was read from the
Tribune of the Convention and signed by ninety-six
members of the Mountain, amongst whom was Camille.
Danton and Robespierre, however, declined to put
their names to it.

The Girondins retaliated by proposing a decree of
accusation against Marat, which they contrived to
pass in the Assembly by a narrow majority, but al-
though the " Friend of the People " was brought in
consequence before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he
was acquitted and carried back to the Convention in
triumph by the populace. Here he behaved with
considerable dignity and forbearance, and the Giron-
dins could not but feel that their attack on the Moun-
tain had most woefully miscarried. Instead of
strengthening their position by this aggression they
had enormously weakened it.

It was in May that Camille published his next and
most virulent attack upon Brissot and his party,
" L'Histoire des Brissotins " (Fragment de I'Histoire
secrete de la Revolution).

Contemporary writers, who were also eye-witnesses
of the events, such as Helen Maria Williams, seem to
have accepted it as indisputable that the act of
accusation against the Girondin deputies was mainly
founded on this pamphlet of Camille's. He himself
writes of it to his father, a little later, as " the mani-
festo, the precursor of the Revolution of May 31st,"
and there is little doubt but that it was the chief

210 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

instrument which brought about the fall of the
Gironde. For those days the circulation of the
pamphlet was immense, more than four thousand
copies being sold.

In this work Camille pursued the same system of
attack as in the " Brissot Demasque." His object
was to prove that the whole party of the Gironde was
Royalist and anti-revolutionary in its tendencies,
thereby discrediting them with the populace, and he
was not particularly scrupulous as to the means he
adopted to prove his unfounded assertions. For
instance, he states that in September, 1792, a large
proportion of the Convention was Royalist, meaning
thereby the faction of the Gironde. This statement
is obviously absurd, and he gives no further proof of
this royalism than the " Implications of the Girondins
against Paris." It is, of course, plain that Camille's
sole object was to depict his enemies as " reactionaries "
without giving any valid reasons for the accusation.

Speaking of Brissot, Petion, Guadet, Gensonne,
Raimond and others, he says : " Until these days it
was held to be impossible to found a Republic except
upon the virtues like the ancient legislators ; but it
has been the immortal glory of this society to create
the Republic with vices."

Camille inveighed against Brissot and his associates
with bitter sarcasm, using with deadly effect the
weapon of his terrible wit. He urged that the
Brissotins should be vomited forth from the Conven-
tion, and the Revolutionary Tribunal " amputated."
Whilst the brilliance of the pamphlet is undeniable,
this fact only made it the more dangerous : never
had Camille written to worse effect in all his literary
career than now, when he used his pen to bring about
the destruction of those men, who, with all their faults,
were amongst the purest patriots in France.

It is undoubted that this pamphlet of Camille's was
written at the direct inspiration of Robespierre.

THE EAST WIND 211

During the greater part of this year of 1793 all the
work of the journalist was practically dictated by his
friend and colleague, who made use of the medium of
Camille's brilliant style to express his own subtle
policy.

Robespierre's whole system of attack upon the
Gironde in the Convention and at the Jacobins was a
series of indeterminate accusations, of vague deduc-
tions, and of spiteful calumnies. This, as we have
seen, was also the plan pursued by Camille in the
" Histoire des Brissotins " with this difference, that
his clear, incisive style gave a deceptive kind of lucidity
to Robespierre's enigmatic and non-committal utter-
ances.

At the same time, the fact that Camille was inspired
in this and other instances by Robespierre does not
shift the blame from the journalist's shoulders. He
was a man, and as such responsible for his own actions,
whether bad or the reverse. The question is, whether
Camille himself acted in good faith by writing as he
did, and here it would certainly be unfair to accuse
him of intentional falsehood or even of insincerity.
It is certain that there was a considerable amount of
personal ill-feeling on his part, towards Brissot at any
rate, but on the whole he probably believed that he
was doing right in striving to bring about the downfall
of the Girondins. It was a party question, and at that
time party warfare was a cruel and remorseless
business, where little mercy was shown, a fight
veritably to the death.

Immediately on the publication of Camille's
pamphlet followed the day of May 31st, when the
Convention, overawed by the Commune, submitted
ignominiously to the demands of the people of Paris,
and, in cowardly fashion, delivered up the deputies of
the Gironde.

At first Brissot and his colleagues were not im-
prisoned, but merely kept under supervision, and

212 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

debarred from taking their seats in the Convention.
In consequence of this comparative freedom a number
of the deputies, amongst whom were Buzot, Barbaroux,
Louvet and Petion, escaped from Paris and made their
way to Normandy, there to stir up civil war.

As military leaders, however, the Girondins failed
signally. They expected the people of the provinces
to flock to their standard as soon as it was raised, but
they were disappointed in this hope. Their general,
Wimpfen, tried to prevail on them to join forces with
the Royalist troops, but this proposal the staunch
Republicans rejected with scorn. At the one pitched
battle with the army of the Convention, at Vernon,
the Girondin army rather dissolved than was defeated.
The deputies began that sorrowful and hopeless flight
through the autumnal countryside, which ended only
in the death of most of them, killed by their own hands,
by the guillotine — by the very dogs of the village.

In Paris the fate of the Girondin deputies was even
more swift and certain. Camille carried his attack
yet further in the " Adresse des Jacobins aux departe-
ments sur I'insurrection du 31 mai," which appeared
during the summer. Nevertheless, it is apparent in
this pamphlet that the journalist did not feel entirely
confident of himself. There is in it a distinct attempt
to justify his course of action, to prove himself in the
right, for his own satisfaction as much as for that of
others, by appealing to the examples of the men of
antiquity, and by a succession of quotations from
Seneca, Plato and Sallust. It is plain enough that
Camille already felt some twinges of remorse.

The misguided heroism of Charlotte Corday in her
murder of Marat was the death-blow of the Girondin
cause. As Vergniaud is reported to have said : " She
has slain us, but she teaches us how to die."

It was in this same month of July, which saw the
death of Marat, that Camille for the first time found
himself under suspicion of that deadly sin of " in-

THE EAST WIND 213

civism " which formed the basis of so many accusations
at that time.

It would appear that the young man had been
somewhat remiss in his attendances at the Convention,
where, indeed, Camille never felt himself in his ele-
ment, and in consequence the deputy Breard went so
far as to accuse him of a connection with the aristocrats
and of favouring their projects.

The real reason of the accusation, however, is to be
traced to the suspicions aroused by Camille's bold and
spirited defence of his friend Arthur Dillon at the
beginning of this month of July. That brave soldier
and fascinating man of the world had been imprisoned
in the Madelonettes on July nth and 12th upon the
accusation of Couthon.

Dillon was almost openly a Royalist, he was the
devoted adherent of Marie-Antoinette ; an ill man
to defend at that time. Nevertheless, Camille took
up the case vehemently, and, what is more, carried it
through successfully, although at the cost to himself
of a stain upon his reputation as a true Republican.
It was a luckless friendship, this of the brilliant Franco-
Irishman for the journalist and his wife. The fact
that Camille undertook his defence was, undoubtedly,
the young man's first step downward from popular
favour, and Dillon's well-meant but misguided actions
later were to be made the pretext for the arrest and
condemnation of Lucile.

Camille must have been very well aware of the danger
which he ran by showing such active sympathy with a
man accused of royalism. Probably he believed then
and later that his own republicanism was above
suspicion, that the people of Paris would always
support their favourite, whatever he might do.
However that may be, there is a letter extant from
Dillon to his counsel which proves that the young man
acted with real devotion and self-forgetfulness, and
which besides throws a curious sidelight upon his

214 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

relationship to Fouquier-Tinville, tlie Public Prose-
cutor. Dillon writes from the prison of the Madelon-
ettes, a short time before his release.

" This tremendous business of mine," he says, " now become
so simple, thanks to your kindness, to your courage, and besides,
and above all, to your fair-dealing, holds by only one thread
which is frightfully elongated by the laziness of your cousin,
Fouquier de TinviUe. . . . only a word from your cousin is
wanted."

In an English journal of that date, the " Argus," we
find the following interesting commentary on Dillon's
relations with Camille and the ultimate result of the case.
The extract is reprinted from the " Register of Occur-
rences " in Sampson Perry's " Historical Sketch " : —

" A. Dillon possessed the friendship of several members of
the Convention, among the rest that of Camille Desmoulins,
who writ a Philippic against the Committee of Public Welfare
almost entirely to vindicate Dillon's conduct and to set forth
his knowledge of his profession and to detail the services he
had rendered France, proving that he would do it still by his
counsels, if not by his sword. The efEect of this weU-written
pamphlet, added to that of a large posting bill wherein he
peremptorily demanded the Committee either to take his head
or to give him his liberty, produced what he desired, and he
was in a few days liberated from the Madelonettes."

There was perhaps a deeper reason than at first
appears for Camille's generous conduct in this matter.
Evil tongues had been busy once again, hinting at
something more than common friendship between
Arthur Dillon and Lucile Desmoulins ; by his self-
sacrificing defence of the elder man Camille could and
did prove his faith in his wife in no uncertain fashion.

That he was aware of the rumours we know from his
own writings ; and the manner in which he answered
the infamous report may vi^ell be set down here : —

" ' Do you know Dillon well ? ' Camille says that an
acquaintance asked him.

THE EAST WIND 215

" ' Of course I know him. Have I not got myself into a
scrape for him, against his will ? ' . . .

" ' Does your wife often see Dillon ? '

" ' I don't think she has seen him four times in her life.' . . .

" ' Since you take it so philosophically, you must know that
Dillon betrays you as well as the Republic. You are not a
handsome fellow.'

" ' Far from it.'

" ' Your wife is charming, Dillon is still handsome, and
women are so fickle.'

" ' Some at least.'

" ' I am sorry for you.' ...

" ' Let your friendship make its mind easy. I see plainly that
you do not know my wife, and if Dillon betrays the Republic
as he betrays me, I will answer for his innocence.' "

Camille's taste may be questioned in publishing this
conversation, imaginary or otherwise. What is un-
questionable is his complete and unswerving faith in
Lucile, as unquestionable as the fact that his young
wife deserved that perfect trust.

After the accusation brought against him in the
Convention, Camille was invited to submit his
character to the scrutiny of the Jacobins. He passed
through the ordeal successfully with the aid of
Robespierre, and managed to clear himself for the
time being.

But this was not the end of the matter. Camille
immediately published what we should now call an
" open " " Lettre au General Dillon," and this letter
was full of expressions which almost pass belief in their
unwisdom. It really would seem as though the
journalist thought that he was privileged to say any-
thing he pleased with impunity.

He spoke of Billaud-Varennes, a personality to be
reckoned with at that time, and a man incredibly bitter
and vindictive, as a coward, and as " the bilious
patriot."

Of Saint-Just, another member of the great Com-
mittee of Government, and the devoted friend of

2i6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Robespierre, he wrote in phrases which have become
famous.

" After Legendre," says Camille, " the member of the
Convention who has the highest opinion of himself is Saint- Just.
One can see by his gait and bearing that he looks upon his own
head as the corner-stone of the Revolution, for he carries it
upon his shoulders with as much respect as if it were the sacred
Host."

Neither Billaud nor Saint-Just ever forgot these
pleasant jests. As we shall soon see, they were from
henceforth among Camille's most bitter and unsparing
enemies.

It would seem as though the journalist himself
suspected that he had gone too far in his attacks on
these extreme members of the Committee. Writing
to his father on August loth, he says : —

"I send you a pamphlet that I have just published (" Lettre
au General Dillon "). Its prodigious success for two days past
makes me almost afraid, because I am not more resentful against
myself. I must needs descend to the depths of my heart, in
order to find there always the same patriotism as of old, that, I
may excuse myself in my own eyes when I see the aristocrats
so delighted."

We possess two letters written by Camille to his
father at this time. The first, dated July 9th, in
which he boasts of the effect of his attack on Brissot,
is mainly cheerful in tone. He complains, in mock
seriousness, that he is compelled to write in his office,
at the Hall of the Assembly, because at home Lucile
always comes to look over his shoulder, to discover
whether he is writing to Guise.

He tells his father, half seriously, half playfully, that
his wife is plainly jealous of his family. She will not
hear of paying a visit to his birthplace, even after
peace shall have been declared. As Camille naively
remarks in a passage already quoted, she is troubled by
the remembrance of ''some cousin of mine, who has
been mentioned to her."

THE EAST WIND 217

The contrast between this letter, with its revelations
of Lucile's pretty jealousy, and that which he wrote to
his father on August loth is very marked. He speaks
of a family sorrow, the news of which has just been
sent to him, and his language is very tender and
affectionate. We should perhaps say here that
Camille's suggestion was perfectly correct. Semery
Desmoulins was in reality a prisoner, and was still
living many years after the death of his father and
elder brother.

" I am very grieved to hear of the death of my brother
Semery, slain in fighting for the fatherland," Camille writes.
" I had no other certainty of a loss so afflicting for you except
the indication of his long silence, and I seized with avidity
upon your doubts as to his death. Is it not possible that you
may still receive him from the hands of the enemy, who perhaps
hold him a prisoner ? I have realised every hour, in seeing
my own son, how this blow must cut you to the heart. My
wife and I have been much touched by the interest which you
feel for this dear little child, whom we love so much that I
have horrible fear of losing him. Life is made up of evil and
good in equal proportions, and for some years evil has floated
around me, so that it seems to me my turn to be submerged
must come. ... It has been said that in every country under
an absolute government, the grand way to succeed is to be
commonplace. I see that this may be true of a Republic. Of
what importance is success to me ? But I cannot bear the sight
of all this accumulated injustice, ingratitude and wrong.
Where can I be as obscure as I am now well known ? Where
is the asylum, the cellar where I may hide from all observation,
with my wife, my child and my books ? I cannot prevent
myself from thinking unceasingly that these men who are
executed in thousands have children, have fathers also. At
least I have none of these murders with which to reproach
myself, nor any of these wars against which I have always
contended. . . . Farewell, I embrace you : take care of your
health so that I may press you to my heart if I am to be suffered
to outlive this revolution, although there are moments when
I am tempted to seek death in La Vendee or on the frontiers to
escape from the spectacle of so many ills. ... It is true that

2i8 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

the state of things, such as it is, is incomparably better than
four years ago, because there is a hope of amendment, a hope
which cannot exist under a despotism of which the slaves are
like the damned who have no more hope."

This letter, as a whole, speaks of discouragement,
of a kind of vicarious remorse, as it were. Camille
boasts that he need not reproach himself for these
murders, and for these ills which afflict his country.
He does not yet realise his personal responsibility, he
is still blind to his own share in the evils which he sees
so plainly. His eyes were soon to be rudely opened ;
in a moment of time he was to see himself revealed as
the murderer of the men who had been his own
familiar friends. It needed some such shock as this
to rouse Camille to a sense of his own responsibilities.

It must necessarily seem to us very strange that
loving, tender-hearted Lucile did not serve as a soften-
ing influence upon Camille at this worst and most
violent period of his life.

The truth would seem to be that Lucile herself
was an ardent little Republican and, in theory, quite
ready to advocate extreme measures. There is an
entry in her diary relative to Marie-Antoinette, where
she describes in high-flown phrases what she would do
in the place of the Queen " if fate had set me upon the
Throne, if, having wrought the misery of my subjects,
a certain death awaited me as the just punishment of
my crimes."

There is a stoical pitilessness in Lucile's imaginings.
" I would have a funeral pile erected and surrounded
by barriers ; and three days before my death I would
have my intentions made known to the people.
Within the enclosure and opposite the funeral pile
I would have an altar erected. During those three
days I would pray at the foot of the altar to the great
Master of the Universe ; the day of my death all my
family should accompany me to the funeral pile in
mourning."

THE EAST WIND 219

Moreover, Lucile loved Camille with an intensity
which bHnded her to all his faults and shortcomings.
Everything which her husband did or wrote doubt-
less seemed in her eyes to be right, and perfectly
justifiable.

It was during the summer of 1793 that the
" Terror " became a systematised method of govern-
ment. There are two things to be remembered in
this connection : firstly, that it was a definite system,
and secondly, that it was not a system which was
intended to be permanent. It is possible that Marie-
Joseph Chenier, himself a Terrorist, gave at once the
best apology and the best explanation for the Terror-
istic Government in the Council of Five Hundred,
on the 27th Ventose, Year IV.

" A monarchy fourteen centuries old," he said, " suddenly
transformed into a Republic ; a war against half Europe ; a
vast civil war in the interior of the country ; it must be allowed
that these trifling circumstances might well justify certain
temporary measures, which would be abandoned in the
tranquillity of a happier time."

The atrocities which have made the Terror a
synonym for unspeakable cruelty are ever to be de-
plored. But who can say that there was no method
in that madness ?

The Terror, in Barere's sounding phrase, was
indeed "on the Orders of the Day" from this time
onward. The Queen had been executed on October
1 6th, the very day on which the armies of the Coalition
were signally defeated at Wattignies by the raw
Republican recruits, directed by the military genius of
Carnot. Danton had retreated to his birthplace
in the middle of the month, broken down in health
after his enormous exertions. He had striven to heal
the breach with the Girondins to his utmost. Now,
in despair, he could only leave them to their fate.

On October 31st the trial of Brissot and his col-

220 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

leagues came to an end, and the death sentence was
passed.

It is from this day that we must date the great
change which came over Camille ; the reaction then
definitely set in which culminated in his appeal for
clemency. For the first time he seems to have realised
the power of the printed word, he saw in a tangible
form the result of his own writings. A terrible truth
was brought home to him ; the truth that, as Mr.
Philip Gibbs expresses it : " at that time in France
an accusation was almost as good as a condemnation,
and that a bitter jest led men to the guillotine."

Camille had shot his arrows of barbed wit recklessly,
thinking, if he thought at all, that they would glance
off without reaching a vital spot. He was to find now
that they had reached their mark, that they had been
only too well aimed ; to paraphrase the poet, he was
to find them " in the heart of a friend."

Vilate, in his Memoirs, of which there is no reason
to doubt the authenticity, tells us hovv^ Camille bore
himself at the trial of the Girondins. This passage has
often been quoted, but it will bear repetition here : —

" I was seated with Camille Desmoulins on the bench placed
before the table of the jury. When they returned from their
deliberation, Camille advanced to speak to Antonelle, who came
in one of the last. Surprised at the alteration in his face,
Camille said to him, rather loud : ' I pity you ; yours are
terrible functions ' ; then, hearing the declaration of the
jury, he threw himself into my arms in distress and agony of
mind : ' Oh, my God, my God ! It is I who kill them ! My
" Brissot Unmasked " ! Oh, my God, this has destroyed
them ! ' As the accused returned to hear their sentence all
eyes were turned on them ; the most profound silence reigned
throughout the hall : the public prosecutor concluded with
the sentence of death. The unfortunate Camille, fainting,
losing his consciousness, faltered out these words : ' I am
going, I am going, I must go out ! ' = He could not."

It would almost appear as though Camille had not

THE EAST WIND 221

thought it possible that the Girondins would be con-
demned to death. Otherwise, he surely would not
have been present at the trial, unless it was a terrible
fascination which dragged him there to hear the end,
whatever that might be.

This day marks the close of the third phase of
Camille's life, that short, worse period, when it seems
as though he were indeed driven by the bitter fury
of the easterly blast. Now the wind has changed and
for the last time. From henceforth Camille, although
often feebly and with hesitation, will yield himself to
a gentler influence ; we shall hear his voice raised now
in a new appeal which sounded strange and foreign in
those days — the appeal for clemency.

PART FOUR
THE SOUTH WIND

" Thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth
by the South Wind."

Job xxxvii. 17,

IT would be making an arbitrary statement and
one neither consistent with the facts nor with
human nature to say that the condemnation of
the Girondin deputies was a definite turning-
point in Camille's life. All that one can affirm is that,
roughly, it marks the end of a phase, and that it is
only after this date that he gives the first tangible
proofs of a change of policy.

It would be incorrect, however, to pretend that this
change came about suddenly. In the passages quoted
from Camille's letters to his father during the summer
of 1793 we have already seen that he was uneasy and
depressed, doubtful as to what would be the upshot of
the conflict which was raging in France. It was not
that his views had changed with regard to the Revolu-
tion itself ; it was not that he had become any the
less a Republican, but there was stirring within him a
feeling of pity and remorse for the bloodshed which he
had helped to bring about. He had begun to ask him-
self that question which later in the year he was to
cry so loudly in the streets : '' Could not the Republic
vanquish as surely by clemency as by the sword ? "

The trial of the Girondins, as we have said before,
brought home to him his own personal responsibility ;
that is really what it amounts to.

There is a story which has been repeated again and
again in many forms, and with so many poetical em-
bellishments that it seems to us now more like the
work of a writer of fiction than a relation of plain
facts. Yet M. Jules Claretie, in his book on the
p 225

226 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Dantonists, vouches for its truth, and asserts that he
heard the story from an unimpeachable authority.
It is his version accordingly which shall be given here.

Some time during the summer of 1793, before
Danton's retirement to Arcis-sur-Aube, he and Camille
were returning homewards one evening after the
session of the Convention. When they came to the
Quai des Lunettes it was near the hour of sunset, and
the crimson light of the sky was reflected in the river
beneath. Danton paused to gaze at the strange
unearthly glow, then turning to his companion with a
shudder, he said :

" Look, see how much blood ! The Seine runs
blood. Ah, too much blood has been spilt ! Come,
take up your pen again ; write and demand clemency
— I will support you."

It is not difficult to accept this story as true ; the
words which Danton is reported to have spoken are in
no way inconsistent with his character, framed as it
was on large lines, both for good and evil. He ex-
pressed the feeling which was growing in him and
Camille alike — a feeling of dissatisfaction, of revulsion
against the present order of things. A presentiment
of evil plainly shadowed the thoughts' of the younger
man as the autumn and winter drew on. At first it
appeared in him as a kind of mental oppression. As
he said to his father : " It seems to me my turn to be
engulfed must come soon."

Later it was to take a more definite form. Camille's
forebodings during the winter and early spring of
1794 were no question of the imagination. To his
honour be it spoken that he was then definitely ad-
hering to a course which he could scarcely have doubted
might lead him to the guillotine.

It was after the downfall of the Gironde, late in the
autumn of 1793, that Camille, as he says himself in
the first number of the " Vieux CordeHer," left his
fireside to take up once more the pen of a journalist.

THE SOUTH WIND 227

He little knew at the outset to what goal this short
campaign was to lead him.

In Danton's absence it is plain that Robespierre had
reassumed even more than his old influence over
Camille. There is very httle doubt that the first con-
ception of the new journal came from him, and there
is practically no question but that Camille thought
that his old comrade would support him in his later
appeal for clemency. He certainly assumed that this
was the case until Robespierre himself destroyed his
illusions.

It is well that this should be plainly understood
from the beginning. The demand for a Committee of
Clemency was not the solitary cry from Camille which
some historians have represented it. He understood
himself to be voicing a policy, and that the policy of
one of the most powerful and popular men in France.
Moreover, we have no reason to question the fact
that, in the depths of his heart, Robespierre himself
was in very truth inclined to merciful measures. Many
things would seem to prove it. If the Committee of
Public Safety, if the universal demand of the people
had supported Camille's proposal, Robespierre would
doubtless have come forward in person and upheld it
with all his strength.

But ... he was afraid. Afraid that he might lose
his popularity and prestige, afraid for his own personal
safety ; that was the difficulty. He was not sure that
the people would support him, not confident that he
could carry the thing through. Eventually, when the
Committee, where Robespierre was not all-powerful,
demanded the arrest of Danton and his adherents, he
was fearful of the consequences of opposition on his
part. As far as Danton was concerned, there is little
doubt that he wished him out of the way. As for
Camille — well, it was wiser even to give up his friend
than to risk the loss of his own popularity.

It amounts to this, then. Camille's real bravery

228 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

consisted not so much in the initial publication of the
" Vieux Cordelier " as in his refusal to retract what
he had written when he discovered that Robespierre
was against him, at least outwardly, and that the
Jacobins thirsted for his blood.

In the meantime Robespierre made use of Camille
as his tool, so long as it served his purpose. When he
found that he was cutting his own hands, he cast the
tool aside.

The incorruptible Maximilian had no journalistic
powers. He could on occasion move men by his
speeches, that is abundantly evident, but in this case
oratory was not sufficient. Besides, Robespierre was
probably a little doubtful as to the wisdom of making
speeches at the Jacobins or the Cordeliers in support
of the movement which he wished now to set on foot,
the movement against the " ultras," the " enrages " —
Hebert, of the " Pere Duchesne " and his party. It
must be remembered that they were still strong in the
clubs — it might be dangerous to inveigh against them
too unwarily and rashly.

The pen of the most brilliant journalist in France
would be invaluable to aid in Robespierre's plans ;
that pen was at his service. If Camille was a little
unwise — a trifle outspoken — well, Robespierre could
not be held responsible for all that his young colleague
might do or say.

It must have seemed to Camille that he had never
started a journal under brighter auspices. His own
popularity as a writer was an assured thing, he was
backed by one of the most prominent men in the
Republic, and the policy laid out for him to pursue
accorded thoroughly with his own inclinations. He
could follow the advice of Danton, that other friend
of his, he could preach a gospel of Clemency, could
put into words all those doubts and misgivings as to
the policy of " Terror " which had been haunting him
for months past.

THE SOUTH WIND 229

Danton, indeed, on returning to Paris after his
retirement at Arcis, had already expressed these doubts
at a sitting of the Jacobins on December 3rd. He
demanded that the members should " defy those who
would carry the people beyond the bounds of the
Revolution and who proposed ultra-revolutionary
measures." These words of Danton's were very badly
received, and it was only after Robespierre himself
had risen to defend his colleague against the charge
of " lukewarmness " which was brought against him
that the murmurs were stilled for the time being.

The very name of the new journal was directed
against the " ultras." This was to be the organ of the
" Old Cordeliers," the founders of the famous club,
whom Camille himself and Danton especially repre-
sented. They had little in common with the " new "
Cordeliers of the school of " Pere Duchesne " and
Chaumette.

The first number of the paper appeared on De-
cember 5th (Quintidi frimaire 2nd Decade, according
to the new calendar). It was described on the cover
as being edited by Camille Desmoulins, " depute de la
Convention, doyen des Jacobins," and it was headed
in large type : " Vivre Libre ou Mourir ! "

This number bore as a motto the words of Machia-
velli : " As soon as those who govern are hated, their
rivals will begin to be admired."

Camille at once strikes the note which he was to
follow up on an ascending scale all through the
succeeding issues. It is the same note which he had
first struck, years before, in the " Discours de la
Lanterne," the accusation that the counter-revolu-
tionary party were endeavouring to disgust the popu-
lace with the Republic by encouraging licence and
extreme measures. What Camille said then, at the
very beginning of his literary career, he says again now.
He congratulates Pitt upon a new system of tactics.
He will then overthrow the Revolution now, not by

230 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

means of the " moderates," but through the " ultras."
This is the keynote of the whole number. The
danger is imminent, Camille says,' the more so that it
is insidious and unperceived save by very keen ob-
servers, who have abundant leisure to note the signs
of the times.

" It is necessary to write," Camille cries. " It is necessary
for me to cast aside the slow-moving pencil of the History of
the Revolution which I was composing in the chimney-corner,
to take up again the rapid and breathless pen of the journalist
and to follow with loose bridle the revolutionary torrent.
Consulting deputy, whom no one has consulted since June 3rd,
I emerge from my office and from my arm-chair, where I
have had sufficient leisure to enable me to follow in detail the
new system of our enemies, which Robespierre has only
presented to you in the mass, and which his multifarious
occupations at the Committee of Public Safety have not
permitted him to embrace, like me, in its entirety. . . .
We have no longer any journal which speaks the truth — at
least the whole truth. I re-enter the arena with all the frank-
ness and the courage which I possess."

Underneath all this we see very plainly the working
of the mind of Robespierre, and, if it was needed, we
have still further proof of Camille's source of inspira-
tion in the journalist's own words after the publication
of the first number, in which he refers to Robespierre's
defence of Danton at the Jacobins.

" Victory is with us," he writes, " because amid the ruins of
so many colossal civic reputations, Robespierre's is unassailed,
because he lent a hand to our competitor in patriotism, our
perpetual president of the ' Ancien Cordeliers,' our Horatius
Codes, who alone held the bridge against Lafayette and his
four thousand Parisians."

It is evident from these words that Camille con-
sidered Robespierre to be openly allied in policy with
himself and Danton. Nevertheless the great man was
not wholly satisfied with the first number of the new
journal. Certainly it was a pronounced popular

THE SOUTH WIND 231

success, but such men as Couthon, St. Just and
Billaud-Varennes, all of them Camille's bitter personal
enemies, looked upon it as distinctly and unmistakably-
retrograde in character. Accordingly Robespierre
requested Camille to submit to his revision the proofs
of the further issues before they were printed.

The second number of the " Vieux Cordelier "
appeared upon December loth (20th frimaire). It
would appear that Robespierre had corrected the
proofs to good purpose, since the evidences of his
influence are even more plainly traceable than before.

The number practically consisted entirely of a most
violent diatribe against Chaumette, Clootz and their
party, and it probably contributed very materially
to their downfall and execution. Now these men
undoubtedly stood in the path of Robespierre. They
were the initiators of the cult of " Reason," a cult
which was entirely opposed to all Robespierre's views,
deist as he was both by policy and by conviction. The
Institution of the religion of the Supreme Being was
doubtless already a fixed purpose in his clear, narrow
mind ; he had before this date made use in the tribune
of Voltaire's famous words : " Si Dieu n'existait pas,
il faudrait I'inventer." All these cults must be cleared
away to make a space on which to erect his new
Theology, a theology where he, Maximilian Robes-
pierre, had his place as high priest.

The opinions expressed in this second number of the
" Vieux Cordelier " with regard to the worship of
Reason are undoubtedly Robespierre's, and not to be
taken as Camille's own. The latter, with all his
faults, could never be accused of that of bigotry ;
probably if left to himself he would have allowed the
followers of the cult of Reason to pursue their own
devices unmolested.

But when he again attacks the " enrages " in this
number Camille is entirely in his element. This is his
own theory ; he is always prepared to work it out

232 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

anew, with ever fresh and more ingenious develop-
ments and illustrations.

" There remained for our enemies no other resources than
those which the Senate of Rome adopted, when, seeing the
poor success of all their attacks against the Gracchi, they
resolved upon the following expedient to overthrow the
patriots. This was to engage a tribune to exaggerate every-
thing that Gracchus proposed, and whenever he brought
forward a popular measure to advance one more popular still,
to the end that principles and patriotism might be killed by
principles and patriotism pushed to extravagance. If the
Jacobin Gracchus proposed the repeopling and the partition
of the land of two or three conquered towns, the heretofore
Feuillant Drusus proposed to divide twelve. Gracchus fixed
the price of bread at sixteen sous, Drusus put the maximum
at eight sous. This succeeded so well that, in a little while,
the people of the Forum, finding that Gracchus was no longer
the most advanced, and that Drusus outstripped him, cooled
towards their true defender, who, once unpopular, was over-
whelmed by the aristocrat Scipio Nasica in the first moral
insurrection."

Camille, it must be confessed, made extraordinarily
adroit use of these illustrations and analogies from
Greek and Roman history. Doubtless he occasionally
distorted the facts to suit his own purpose, but on the
whole he made a legitimate application of them, and
displayed both ingenuity and a very wide knowledge
of his subject.

Nevertheless in spite of its wit and adroitness
Camille's attack upon Anarcharsis Clootz in this
number of the journal was both cruel and unwarrant-
able. The visionary Prussian, scarcely sane though he
might be and full of wild schemes and visions, was,
notwithstanding, a high-minded and high-principled
man. His self-assumed title of " orator of the Human
Race " was not adopted in any light spirit, and he
most certainly did not deserve the epithet of " Hypo-
crite of Patriotism " which Camille applied to him
and to his colleagues.

THE SOUTH WIND 233

This whole number is a relapse on the part of the
journalist into his worst faults. The methods adopted
in it, undoubtedly inspired hy Robespierre as they
were, savour too much of the " Brissot Demasque."
There is the same system of trumped-up charges, of
veiled innuendoes intended to discredit their subject
and succeeding only too well.

" Clootz is a Prussian ; he is cousin-german of that Proly,
who has been denounced so many times. . . .

" He worked for the ' Gazette Universale,' at which time
he made war upon patriots, I believe, on the occasion of the
' Champ-de-Mars.'

" Guadet and Vergniaud were his sponsors, and caused him
to be naturaHsed as a French citizen, by a decree of the Legisla-
tive Assembly."

It is with suggestions like these that Camille
nourished the suspicions of his readers. In the con-
cluding paragraph of this number he sets forth the
accusation in clear and unmistakable terms.

" Anarcharsis and Anaxagoras (Chaumette) seem to believe
themselves to be pushing the wheel of reason, whilst it is in
reality that of counter-revolution ; and soon, instead of allow-
ing Catholicism to die in France of old age and inanition,
ready as it is to give up the ghost without procuring any
advantage for our enemies, since the treasure of the sacristies
will not escape Cambon, by persecution and intolerance of
those who wish to continue their masses, I will answer for it
that you will ensure strong constitutional reinforcements for
Lescure and La Rochejacquelein."

While Camille was busy with the publication of the
first two numbers of his paper, his enemies had not
been idle. It appears that the journalist's emotion and
self-reproach at the trial of the Girondins had not
passed unnoticed ; it was on these grounds that he
was accused at the Jacobins on December 1st. How-
ever, for the moment the accusation went no further,
and Camille awaited his turn of " purification."

This ceremony was instituted by the Jacobins and

234 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Cordeliers at this time, chiefly at the instigation o£
Robespierre. Turn by turn those who were accused of
" slackness " or " lukewarmness " in the service of the
Republic, or who were supposed to be tainted with the
deadly sin of " incivism," were allowed to present
themselves before the assembled members of the club
and to set forth their defence, purging themselves, if
possible, of the crimes of which they were accused.
If the assembly judged them innocent, on their own
showing, they were received back into full membership,
and considered to be rehabilitated in the eyes of their
fellows. If, on the contrary, they could not disprove
the accusations brought against them, they were
expelled from the club, and such expulsion was nearly
always followed by a definite accusation made to the
Revolutionary Tribunal. Unless the culprit was for-
tunate enough to make good his escape, he was almost
invariably arrested and brought to trial — a trial which
rarely ended in any other sentence than that of death.

Two days after the appearance of Camille's second
number, Anarcharsis Clootz was called to the bar of the
Jacobins, and his name erased from the list of member-
ship of the Club, after a violent speech delivered by
Robespierre. The orator repeated almost word for
word the accusations which had been brought against
Clootz in the " Vieux Cordelier " by Camille, or
rather by Robespierre himself.

At the sitting of the Jacobins on the following after-
noon Camille was called upon to " purify " himself. As
before, his incriminating behaviour at the trial of
Brissot and his colleagues was the subject of the
accusation. Why, the journalist was asked, had he
expressed pity and regret at the condemnation of
these enemies of his country ? Besides this, an ex-
planation was demanded from him of his conduct with
regard to the defence of Arthur Dillon, and the atti-
tude which he had taken up in the published " Lettre
au General Dillon " was severely blamed.

THE SOUTH WIND 235

As far as can be judged from the printed reports of
this session, Camille defended himself with consider-
able courage and dignity against the implication that
he was lacking in patriotism.

" I believed Dillon to be brave and useful," he said, " and
therefore I defended him. As to the Girondins, I was in an
extraordinary position with regard to them. I have always
loved and served the Republic : but I have often been deceived
respecting those who served it ; I adored Mirabeau, I esteemed
Barnave and the Lameths ; I confess it ; but I sacrificed my
friendship and my admiration as soon as I realised that they
had ceased to be Jacobins. A marked fatality has ordained
that of the sixty revolutionaries who signed my marriage
contract, only two friends remain to me now, Danton and
Robespierre. All the others have emigrated or are guillotined.
Of this number were seven of the twenty-two. A movement
of emotion was surely very pardonable in me on this occasion.
Notwithstanding, I swear that I did not say : ' They die as
republicans, like Brutus,' but I said : ' They die as republicans,
but as federalist republicans,' because I do not believe that there
were any Royalists amongst them."

Camille's speech appears to have had its effect.
Moreover, he was still popular with the majority of
the members of the Club.

" Camille has been unlucky in his choice of friends,"
cried one of the Jacobins present. " Let us prove to
him that we know how to choose ours better, by wel-
coming him warmly."

Robespierre himself rose to defend his young col-
league, although one cannot help thinking that the
excuses which he brought forward must have been
almost as galling to touchy, hot-tempered Camille as
the previous accusations had been. Robespierre
apologised for his friend on the score of what he called
his " weaknesses."

" He is easily led and over-confident," he said ; " but he has
always been a Republican. He loved Mirabeau, Lameth,
Dillon : but he has himself broken his idols when he found

236 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

that he had been deceived. I adjure him to pursue his career
with confidence, but to be more reserved in the future, and to
endeavour not to be deceived with regard to the men who
play a great part upon the poHtical stage."

This was the attitude which Robespierre constantly
took up towards Camille and his conduct, and which the
latter was to resent in the end to his cost. He treated
the younger man as a spoilt boy, scarcely responsible
for his actions, whom one must not take too seriously.

At this time Robespierre's word was law at the
Jacobins, and the accusation against the journalist was
withdrawn amidst acclamations.

Nevertheless the slight suspicions which Camille
had brought upon himself in the summer by his
attitude with regard to Dillon were perceptibly
increased. The extreme party no longer looked upon
him as an untainted patriot. This feeling of uneasiness
respecting him had been still further accentuated by
his defence of Philippeaux.

This honest and upright Republican had lately
returned from the Vendean provinces, enraged, partly
from political, partly from personal motives, against
the general staff of the Conventional Army at Saumur,
which included Ronsin, Rossignol and others of the
most advanced party. On the 1 8th Nivose Philippeaux
made a vehement speech at the Convention, in which
he denounced the cruelties practised by the Republican
generals, and demanded mercy for the Vendeans.

Not content with the storm of opposition which he
raised against himself, both within and without the
Hall of the Assembly, Philippeaux then published a
pamphlet which attracted a great deal of attention.
In this he repeated his accusations against the com-
manders in La Vendee, with additions, and accused
Ronsin in particular of the most pronounced treason.

Camille up to this time appears to have known
little or nothing of Philippeaux, but he found himself
entirely in agreement with the writer's views. The

THE SOUTH WIND 237

" enrages " in La Vendee then were as bad as those in
Paris — that was just what might have been expected.
The journaHst admired Philippeaux's courage and
frankness without taking into consideration that, to a
certain extent, he was Winded by personal animosity.
Camille praised the pamphlet openly on every occa-
sion, and the commendation of one of the most
brilliant writers in Paris naturally helped materially
to popularise Philippeaux's philippic, at least in the
capital.

On December 15th, two days after Camille had
temporarily cleared his character at the Jacobins, the
third number of the " Vieux Cordelier " was
published, that famous third number which brought
down upon the head of its author the wrath of the
Jacobins, and which forced Robespierre to abjure his
former disciple from fear of possible consequences.

It is in these third and fourth numbers of the new
journal that Camille accomplished his greatest work,
both in a literary and in a moral sense. Had they
never been written, he would be remembered as a
brilliant journalist, whose pen served some good and
many bad purposes, and his personality must always
have been interesting to students of history and human
nature. But, nevertheless, his career would not have
merited any very serious attention ; he would indeed
have appeared only as the weathercock of the Revolu-
tion, an indicator of varying winds, but without
objective force of his own.

By the publication of these two issues of the
" Vieux Cordelier " Camille set himself upon an
altogether different plane. Hitherto he had worked
for his own reputation's sake, to express his ov^^n views,
or those of the men who influenced him at the time ;
now he was labouring to save the lives of others and
to touch the hearts of the people that they might join
in his appeal for mercy.

In this famous Number Three Camille adopted a

238 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

simple, but extraordinarily effective method. It is
the most masterly example of his adaptation of history
to suit his purposes. Whilst affecting to give only a trans-
lation from Tacitus, he makes a determined and power-
ful attack upon the Terrorist " Law of Suspects."

Camille may, as he says, have intended merely to
convey a warning, but the picture was too exact to
be otherwise than a deadly offence against the Com-
mittee of Public Safety and the " ultras." Never
was there a more scathing satire, and its absolute and
undeniable truth made it the more unanswerable and
enraging. For the simile is only too exact : the law of
" suspect " of Tacitus is no more than a prototype of
that which had been decreed in Paris.

The writer claims in this very number that he is
shielded by the law of the liberty of the Press, and he
dares any man to assert that one may not write as
freely in France as in England. Camille was mis-
taken ; he had gone too far.

In order that Camille may be fairly judged, it will
be necessary to quote freely from this work of his, but
an apology for doing so is scarcely needed. He explains
the method which he adopted as follows : —

" Since the Republic and the Monarchy are even now engaged
in a war to the death, which must inevitably end in a bloody
victory for one or the other, who would deplore the triumph
of the Republic after having read the description which
history has left to us of the triumph of a Monarchy, after
having thrown a glance upon the rough and unpoHshed copy
of the picture of Tacitus which I am going to present to the
honourable circle of my subscribers ? "

So far, so good ; it was in that same " rough and
unpolished copy of Tacitus " that the sting of Camille's
satire lay. It is only necessary to read the extracts
which follow : —

" ' Augustus was the first to extend the law of lese-majeste,
in which he comprised writings which he called counter-
revolutionary. ... As soon as words had become state crimes,

THE SOUTH WIND 239

it was only a step to transform into offences mere glances,
sorrow, compassion, sighs, silence even.

" ' Soon it was the crime of lese-majeste or of counter-
revolution in the town of Nursia to have raised a monument
to its citizens, slain at the siege of Modena when fighting under
Augustus himself, because at that time Augustus fought upon
the side of Brutus. . . .

" ' Crime of counter-revolution in the mother of the consul
Fusius Geminus, to have wept over the mournful death of
her son. It was necessary to display joy at the death of a friend,
or of a relation if one did not wish to run the risk of perishing
oneself. . . . Everything gave offence to the tyrants. Was
a citizen popular ? He was then a rival to the prince, and
doubtless wished to stir up a civil war : Studia civium in se
verteret et si multi idem audeant^ belluni esse. Suspect.

" ' If, on the contrary, a man fled from popularity and hid
himself in his own chimney-corner ; this retired life made
him remarkable, gave rise to consideration : Quanta metu
occultior, tanto fames adeptus. Suspect.

" * Were you rich ? There was imminent peril that the
people would be corrupted by your gifts : Auri vim atque opes
Plauti principi injensas. Suspect.

" ' Were you poor ? Hold ! Invincible Emperor, it is
necessary to watch this man very closely. Nobody is so enter-
prising as he who has nothing. Syllam inopem, unde precipuam
audaciam. Suspect.

" ' Were you of a sombre and melancholy character, neglect-
ing your appearance ; doubtless that which grieved you was
the prosperous state of public affairs. Hominem bonis publicis
moestum. Suspect.

" ' If, on the contrary, a citizen gave himself over to re-
velling and feasting, he diverted himself because the Emperor
had had that attack of gout which happily came to nothing ;
it was necessary to make him feel that his Majesty was still
in the full vigour of his age. Reddendam pro intempestiva
licentia moestum etfunebrem noctum qua sentiat vivere Vitellium
et imperare. Suspect.

" ' Was he virtuous and austere in his manners ; good ! A
new Brutus who affects by his pallor and his cropped hair to
censure an amiable and well-curled court. Gliscere oemulos
Brutorum vultus rigidi et tristis quo tibi lasciviam exprobent.
Suspect.

240 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

" ' Was he a philosopher, an orator, or a poet ? It might
happen that he would gain more renown than those who
governed ! Could one allow more attention to be paid to an
author on a fourth floor, than to the Emperor in his iron-
barred palace ? Firginuni et Rufum claritudo nominis. Suspect.

" ' Finally, if a man had acquired a reputation in the wars,
he was only the more dangerous by reason of his talents. . . .
The best way is to get rid of him. At least, my lord, can you
not dispense with his services, and withdraw him promptly
from the army ? Multa militari jama metumjecerat. Suspect.

" ' One might well believe that it was a very bad thing to be
the grandson or otherwise related to Augustus ; one might
some day be supposed to have pretensions to the throne.
Nobiem et quod tunc sfectaretur e Ccesarum fosteris ! Suspect.' "

Afterwards at considerable length Camille develops
his argument that the counter-revolution (embodied
in the person of " Pitt ") is working by means of the
ultra-revolutionaries. Towards the end of the number
he boldly acknowledges his consciousness of the
parallel which he has drawn.

" It is undoubted that in this Number Three and in my
translation from Tacitus, malignity will find some resemblance
between these deplorable times and our own. I know it well,
and I have armed myself with my pen for the sole purpose of
striving to put an end to these resemblances, so that liberty
may no more appear like despotism. ... I make no pretence
of pointing out anybody in particular in this number. . . .
Let those men hasten to correct their conduct who, in reading
these living pictures of tyranny, find there some likeness to
themselves ; because it is impossible to persuade oneself that
the portrait of a tyrant, drawn by the hand of the greatest
painter of antiquity, and by the historian of philosophers, can
now have become the portrait, taken from nature, of Cato or of
Brutus, and that this which Tacitus called despotism and the
worst of governments sixteen centuries ago, can to-day be
called liberty and the best of all possible worlds."

In order that one may grasp the full aptness of
Camille's satire, it is as well to compare with his
translation from Tacitus the literal text of the

THE SOUTH WIND 241

Terrorist law of " suspect " as stated by Chaumette in
one of the sittings of the Commune of Paris on
October 12th, 1793.

" Those should be regarded as suspected," he said on that
occasion, " (i) who, in the assembHes of the people, arrest
their energy by astute discourses, by turbulent cries and by
menaces.

" (2) Those who, more prudent, speak mysteriously of the
misfortunes of the Repubhc, deplore the fate of the people, and
are always ready to spread bad news with affected sorrow.

" (3) Those who have changed their conduct and their
language according to events ; who, mute as to the crimes of
royalists and of federalists, declaim with emphasis against the
light faults of patriots, or affect, to appear republican, an
austerity, a studied severity. . . .

" Those who have not taken any active part in the Revolu-
tion, and who, to exculpate themselves, think to atone by the
value of their patriotic gifts, for their non-payment of con-
tributions.

" Those who have received with indifference the Republican
Constitution, and those who have expressed false fears upon
its establishment and its duration.

" Those who, having done nothing against liberty, have also
done nothing for her.

" Those who neglect to go to their sections, and who give
for excuse that they do not know how to speak, or that their
affairs detain them."

Can one wonder at the indignation of the Jacobins ?
Camille, as usual, had chosen the most effective weapon
at his disposal. In this case, nothing could wound
more deeply or more dangerously than the plain and
practically unvarnished truth.

II

THE appearance of the third number of the
" Vieux Cordeher " caused an immense
sensation in Paris, and, indeed, throughout
France. It is said that some fifty thousand
copies each were sold of the third and fourth issues
of the paper.

As Camille himself had foreseen, the Royalists made
great capital out of the attitude which he had taken up
in " No. 3." The journalist might protest as much
as he pleased against a misconception of his policy
on the part of the counter-revolutionaries, but the fact
remains — to his credit — that he had undoubtedly
helped their cause. M. Louis Blanc, from the point
of view of an extreme Republican, of course regrets
Camille's course of action, but he estimates the
situation, on the whole, very justly.

"The publication of this third number upon the 15th
December," he writes, "was the signal for an immense
scandal. All the counter-revolutionaries clapped their hands,
all hastened to spread the news abroad that Camille Desmoulins
had traced the history of his own epoch ; against his will, the
generous but rash writer had, in giving hope to the innocent,
served the calculations of hatred."

Camille had indeed " given hope to the innocent."
His journal was read even in the prisons, where those
incarcerated saw, for the first time, a glimmer of hope,
a possibility of justice, if not of mercy. One can only
appreciate their incredulous joy at this changed attitude
of Camille's by remembering that hitherto he had
been looked upon as one of the most extreme of the
Revolutionary journalists. Letters came to him from

242

THE SOUTH WIND 243

prisoners and their friends or relations in all parts of
France ; one can fancy that he — not lacking in a
sense of humour — read these epistles with somewhat
mixed feelings.

Nor had there been wanting direct results from the
publication of the third number. M. Aulard tells us,
in his " Political History of the French Revolution,"
that, upon December 20th, a deputation of women
came to the bar of the Convention, demanding with
tears the liberation of their imprisoned relatives. The
deputies were moved to pity, and it was decreed that
the two Government Committees should appoint a
Committee of Justice to " look into the means of
setting at liberty such patriots as might have been
imprisoned."

Here was a definite outcome of Camille's appeal :
here was the " Committee of Clemency " which he
demanded in actual process of formation. But it was
not to be. Robespierre was beginning to dread the
loss of his power. He feared that such a step as this
would unduly increase the influence of the Dantonists,
and he accordingly induced the Convention to revoke
the decree which established this Committee of Justice.

Michelet apparently believes that it was upon
December 13th that this deputation of women
appeared at the Convention, that is, before the third
number of the " Vieux Cordelier " was published.
However, in this instance, there can be little or no
doubt that the date given by M. Aulard is correct.

Camille did not hesitate to temporise now that he
had definitely adopted a policy. The next issue of his
paper appeared upon December 20th, only five days
after the appearance of the last number. As regards
the extraordinary reception which this Number Four
received, we cannot do better than quote Michelet's
eloquent words.

" Upon the 2ist of December," he says, " early in the morn-
ing a long queue of purchasers gathered at the door of the book-

244 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

seller, Desenne, who fought with each other for the possession
of the fourth number. They paid for it at second hand, at
third hand, the price rose always, until it reached as much as
a louis for one copy. People read it in the streets in their
impatience, choked with tears. From the very heart of France
had burst forth the voice of humanity, of blind, impatient,
all-powerful pity, that voice of compassion which pierces
through walls, which beats down strong fortresses . . , the
clarion cry which will touch all souls for ever, the demand for
a ' Committee of Clemency ! ' "

In a few vivid words the great historian gives us here
a pathetic picture of that impatient frenzied crowd,
waiting in the bleak cold of the dark winter's morning
for the flimsy news-sheets which bore the words of
hope to thousands. For Camille Desmoulins had not
disappointed that host of subscribers. If he had gone
far in number three of the " Vieux Cordelier," he went
still further in the fourth issue ; his appeal for mercy
rang out clearly this time, and with no hint of un-
certainty.

It is quite plain that Camille still believed
that Robespierre would support him. He says so,
in fact, in a manner which allows of no miscon-
ception.

" Oh, my dear Robespierre," he writes in this same fourth
number "... oh, my old college comrade, dost thou not
remember those lessons of history and philosophy in which we
learnt that love is more strong and more durable than fear ?
. . . You have already come close to this idea."

These words must have been very bitter to Robes-
pierre a little later, when his one thought was to
dissociate himself from Camille and his policy by
every means in his power.

This number four is headed by a quotation from J. J.
Rousseau's " Contrat Social " : " Le plus fort n'est
jamais assez fort pour etre toujours le maitre, s'il ne
transforme sa force en droit."

At the very beginning Camille defends himself

THE SOUTH WIND 245

stoutly against the charges of unpatriotism which
have been brought against him.

" Many people have disapproved of my No. 3, ;n which I
have been pleased, they say, to make comparisons which tend
to throw the Republic and patriots into disfavour : they
ought, however, to say the excess of the Revohition and the
patriot-adventurers."

Camille goes on to protest against those who assert
that Liberty must needs pass through a stormy and
troublous childhood. According to him, she is born
full-grown and should at once bring in her train all
peace and happiness. Let us destroy our enemies by
all means, he cries, but do not let us go further and
kill all those harmless lookers-on, the people who are
merely carried away by the impulse of the moment,
or by the power of an orator.

" No, this Liberty descended from Heaven is not a nymph
of the Opera, not a red cap, a dirty shirt, or rags and tatters.
Liberty is happiness, reason, equality ; she is justice, she is
embodied in the Declaration of Rights, in your sublime
Constitution ! Do you wish me to recognise her, to fall at
her feet, to shed my blood in her service ? Open the doors of
the prisons to those two hundred thousand citizens whom you
call ' suspects ' ; because in the Declaration of Rights there
is no house of suspicion, there are only houses of detention ;
there are no suspected persons, only those convicted of crimes
fixed by the law. And do not believe that this measure would
be harmful to the Republic. It would be the most Revolu-
tionary measure that you could possibly take. You think to
exterminate ail your enemies by means of the guillotine !
But could there possibly be greater folly ? Can you kill one
person upon the scaffold without making for yourself ten more
enemies amongst his family or his friends ? "

Camille then goes on to develop his argument
further. He lays stress on the fact that the unfortu-
nates who crowd the prisons of Paris are not worthy
of the mighty anger of the Republic ; they are only
women, children, old men, the sick and the cowardly —

246 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

capable neither of much good nor of much evil. It
were far better to leave them to sit harmlessly in their
chimney corners.

Then the journalist strikes a graver note. These
constant executions, he says, are demoralising to the
people of Paris : they constitute a serious danger to
the State. " It is not love for the Republic which
draws all the world daily to the Place de la Revolution,
but curiosity and the anticipation of that unique
drama which can have but one single representation.
I am sure that the greater number of those who
habitually view this spectacle, in the depths of their
hearts mock at their neighbours who, at the opera or
at a tragedy see only a pasteboard sword, and come-
dians who do but simulate death. Such, says Tacitus,
was the insensibility of the city of Rome, its unnatural
security, and its perfect indifference towards the fate
of all parties alike."

And now followed that famous passage which was to
prove Camille's death warrant in very truth, a passage
which is best to be appreciated in its original language.

" Je peux bien differemment de ceux qui vous disent qu'il
faut laisser la terreur a I'ordre du jour. Je suis certain, au
contraire, que la liberte serait consolidee et I'Europe vaincue,
si vous aviez un comite de clemence ; c'est ce comite qui
finirait la Revolution ; car la clemence est aussi une mesure
revolutionnaire et la plus efficace de toutes, quand elle est
distribuee avec sagesses. Que les imbeciles et les fripons
m'appellent modere, s'ils le vc^ent ; je ne rougis point de
n'etre pas plus enrage que Marcus Brutus. . . .

" L'etablissement d'un comite de clemence me parait une
idee grande et digne du peuple fran<5ais, effa^ant de sa memoire
bien des fautes, puisqu'il en a efface le temps meme ou elles
furent commises, et qu'il a cree une nouvelle ere de laquelle
seule il date sa naissance et ces souvenirs. A ce mot de clemence
quel patriote ne sent pas ses entrailles emues ? Car le patriot-
isme est la plenitude de toutes les vertus, et ne peut pas con-
sequemment exister la ou il n'y a ni humanite, ni philanthropie
mais une ame aride and desseche par I'egoisme."

THE SOUTH WIND 247

These were bold words indeed when one considers
that practically all the members of the great Com-
mittee of Government were more or less to be included
amongst the " enrages." It is no less boldly that
Camille justifies himself at the conclusion of the
number.

" I have adopted, in my role of journalist, the liberty of
opinion which belongs to the representative of the people in
the Convention. I have expressed my opinions as to the best
method of effecting a revolution in writing, since the feeble-
ness of my voice and my slight oratorical powers will not permit
me to develop them in another fashion. ... If, I say, my
Committee of Clemency appears ill-sounding to some of my
colleagues and savouring of moderation, to those who reproach
me with being a moderate in this No. 4, I can respond, as did
Marat, when, in very different times, we reproached him with
over- violence in his journal : ' Vous n'y entendez rien ; eh,
mon Dieu ! laissez-moi dise : on n'en rabattra que trop.' "

It may assuredly be said of Camille's views with
regard to the reign of peace and liberty that they were
Utopian and impossible of realisation. He confidently
expected a millennium to come to pass before its time.
But at least it is an optimism which does his heart
credit, and which, even now, lends to his words an
irresistible appeal.

Meanwhile the Hebertists were gathering them-
selves together. It must be remembered that this
was no mere newspaper war ; it was a life and death
fight, with the guillotine as the punishment for defeat.

Danton was in Paris once more, as we have seen, and
combating the policy of the " enrages," but he had
lost his once mighty influence both in the Convention
and at the Clubs by his absence. Robespierre was still
compassing the fall of the " ultras," but, none the
less, he both disliked and feared Danton and dreaded
that the great Tribune might regain his former power.

On the 1st of Nivose (December 21st) Camille was
denounced at the Jacobins by one Nicolas, a juror

248 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

to the Revolutionaiy Tribunal. This man was also a
printer and worked in this capacity for the Ministry
of War and the Revolutionary Tribunal, by means of
which he had become a wealthy man. He was, more-
over, the devoted friend and adherent of Robespierre.
As Camille himself said of him, in the fifth number of
the " Vieux Cordeher " : " Nicolas est un gaillard
grand et fort qui, arme d'une gros baton, suivant
Robespierre partout et valait a lui seul, une compagnie
de muscadins."

This Nicolas then ascended the tribune especially
to denounce the third number of the " Vieux Cor-
deher."

" I rise," said he, " to denounce Camille Desmoulins. I
accuse him of having written a Hbel with criminal and counter-
revolutionary intentions. I appeal to those who have read it.
Camille Desmoulins has been within a close shave of the
guillotine for a long time ; as a proof it is only necessary to
remind you of the steps which he took at the Revolutionary
Committee af my section to save a bad citizen whom we had
arrested by order of the Committee of Geperal Security, as
accused of intimate correspondence with conspirators and of
having sheltered the traitor Nantouillet in his house. I
demand the expulsion of Camille Desmoulins from the bosom
of this Society."

This measure was supported by Camille's bitter
enemy Hebert, and the journalist was invited to ex-
plain the denunciations pronounced against him.
Camille reserved his defence, as we shall see, for
publication in his fifth number, but meanwhile his
enemies were gathering around him.

A new champion had appeared upon the side of the
Jacobins. Collot d'Herbois arrived in Paris on
December 21st somewhat unexpectedly, fresh from
consummating the Terror in Lyons. He openly
supported Hebert and his partisans against Camille
in the Convention and at the Clubs. Yet another of
Camille's greatest enemies returned from the frontier

THE SOUTH WIND 249

at this moment. Austere, implacable Saint-Just took
his place beside his master, Robespierre, hating the
Hebertists, it is true, yet hating Camille even more,
and with a bitterer personal animosity.

Truly the over-bold journalist was hemmed in on
every side. It only remained for Robespierre to desert
him, and that was soon to come. As von Sybel says,
the attitude of the incorruptible Maximilian at this
juncture was extraordinary throughout ; it is only
explicable when one remembers the strange streak of
cowardice in this man.

After the appearance of Camille's No. 4, the Club
of the Cordeliers cast him out. At the beginning of
his fifth number, which, although dated Nivose 5th
(December 25th), did not appear until Nivose i6th
(January 5th, 1794), the journalist laughs at the idea
of this expulsion.

" Voyaiit que le pere Duchesne, et presque toutes les
sentinelles patriotes, se tenaient sur le tillac avec leurs lunettes
occupes uniquement a crier : ' Gare ! Vous touchez au
moderantisme ! ' il a bien fallu que moi, vieux Cordelier et
doyen des Jacobins, je me chargeasse de la faction difficile, e :
dont aucun des jeunes gens ne voulait, par crainte de se
depopulariser ; celle de crier : * Gare ! Vous allez toucher a
I'exageration ! ' . . . Pardon, freres et amis, si j'ose prendre
encore le titre de ' Vieux Cordelier ' apres I'arrete du Club,
qui me defend de me parer de ce nom. Mais, en verite, c'est
une insolence si inouie que celle de petit-fils se revoltant centre
leur grand-pere, et lui defendant de porter son nom que je
veux plaider cette cause centre ces fils ingrats."

In this number Camille attacked his enemies per-
sonally. He made unsparing use of that dangerous
weapon of ridicule which had already created against
him those bitter foes who were hunting him down.
He proceeds at first to rebut the accusations of royalism
and conspiracy, brought against him by Nicolas, raising
counter-accusations of bribery and corruption. The
concluding phrase is totally untranslatable, referring

250 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

as it does to Nicolas' slang expression that : " Camille
had shaved (frise) the guillotine pretty closely."

" C'est ainsi que moi, je suis un aristocrate qui frise la
guillotine et que Nicolas est un sans-culotte qui frise la for-
tune."

" However," Camille continues, " the ' hit-hards ' have
believed Nicolas rather than Robespierre ; and already in
groups they call me a conspirator. It is true, citizens, that for
five years I have conspired to render France Republican, happy
and flourishing."

Then follows the account, already given, of that
great day, July 12th, 1789. In vivid and moving
language the journalist recalls the occasion, for he is
using the recollection of his own part in that event
as a plea for his honour and for his life.

Then, having justified himself before the people, he
turns again upon the " ultras," jeering at them with
more than his old bitter raillery. Barere, speaking
in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, had
solemnly denounced Camille's attitude.

" Very well," says the journalist, " one day posterity will
judge between the ' suspects ' of Barere, and the ' suspects ' of
Tacitus. In the meantime, the patriots shall be satisfied in
my respect ; because, after this solemn censure, I have acted
like Fenelon, who mounted into the pulpit to read aloud the
brief of the Pope, condemning his ' Maxims of the Saints,' and
tore them up himself; I am ready to burn my Number 3 ;
and already I have forbidden Desenne to reprint it, at least
unbound."

This seeming acquiescence of Camille in their
decrees cannot have been a source of any particular
satisfaction to Barere or to his colleagues upon the
Committee of Public Safety ; more especially when we
read what follows. Is it Barere^ the journalist asks,
who blames him thus from the tribune ?

" If it had been an old Cordelier like myself, a right-angled
patriot like Billaud-Varennes, for example, who had attacked

THE SOUTH WIND 251

me so severely ... but thou, my dear Barere, thou, the
President of the Feuillants, thou who hast proposed the
Committee of Twelve . . . thou against whom I could bring
up many other faults if I wished to foul the ' Vieux-Sac ' . . .
thou, who hast all at once out-Robespierred Robespierre ! "

But it is Hebert whom Camille attacks most fiercely,
doubtless still feeling quite confident here of the
support of Robespierre. He assails the unspeakable
" Pere Duchesne " with all the virulence of which he
is capable. He accuses Hebert of being an " ecrivain
engage " bought and bribed by Bouchotte and others
to calumniate Danton, Philippeaux and Camille
himself. He ends his tirade with this terrible
passage : —

" Dost thou not know, Hebert, that when the tyrants of
Europe wish to vilify the Republic, when they wish to cause it
to be believed that France is covered with the darkness of
barbarism, that Paris, so praised for its Attic glory and taste,
is peopled by Vandals ; dost thou not know, wretched man,
that to gain their ends it is extracts from thy writings that they
insert in their gazettes ? As if the people were as ignorant and
stupid as thou wouldst have Mr. Pitt believe them to be ; as
if no one could speak to him save in language like thine, as if
such was the speech of the Convention and of the Committee
of Public Safety ; as if thy filthiness was that of the nation ;
as if a sewer of Paris were the Seine ! "

Amongst Plebert's furious and often impotent
accusations against Camille had been this, that the
journalist had married a rich wife, coupled with some
of those foul innuendoes which were the natural
language of " Pere Duchesne." There is much simple
dignity in the words wherein Camille answers this
accusation and vindicates the unsullied happiness of
his married life. We have quoted from this passage
in an earlier chapter, but we will give it here in its
entirety. It touches a deeper and a graver note than
can be found in all the bitter raillery of the remainder
of this number ; there is in it something intimate and

252 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

personal ; a revelation of the tenderer, happier side of
Camille's life. It is one of those passages in his writings
for which we love the man ; where he speaks from his
heart, as it were, driven by an irresistible impulse.

" I will only say one word about my wife. I have always
believed in the immortality of the soul. After the many
sacrifices of personal interests which I have made to liberty
and for the happiness of the people, I have said, at the height
of the persecution : ' There must be some recompense for
virtue elsewhere.' But my marriage is so happy, my domestic
bliss so great, that I feared to have received my recompense
already upon earth, and I almost lost my confidence in immor-
tality. But thy persecutions, thy rage against me, thy cowardly
calumnies have rendered back to me all my hope.

" As to the fortune of my wife, she brought me an income of
four thousand livres, which is all that I possess. In this
revolution where, if I may be permitted to say it, I have played
a sufficiently large part, where I have been a polemical writer,
importuned turn by turn by all parties, who have found me
incorruptible, where, some time before the loth of August,
they bargained even for my silence, and that at a high price.
Ah, well, in this revolution where I have filled successively the
posts of Secretary-General to the Department of Justice and
that of representative of the people to the Convention, my
fortune has not been increased by so much as one sou. Hebert,
can you say as much for yourself ? "

Towards the end of this fifth number Camille rises
to a height of eloquence which almost seems inspired,
nay, which was inspired, in the highest sense of the
word.

" Oh, my colleagues, I say to you as Brutus did to Cicero :
' We are too much afraid of death, exile and poverty —
Nimium timemu mortem et exilium et paupertatem.' Is this
life worth being prolonged at the expense of honour ? . . .
Ah, why ! when every day twelve hundred thousand French
soldiers face redoubts bristling with cannon, and fly from
victory to victory ; we, deputies to the Convention, we who
cannot fall like the soldiers in the obscurity of night, shot down
in the shadows, without witnesses of their valour, we, in whom

THE SOUTH WIND 253

death endured for liberty can only be glorious, solemn and in
the presence of the entire nation, of Europe and of posterity —
shall we be more cowardly than our soldiers ? Shall we fear to
expose ourselves, and to meet Bouchotte face to face ? Shall
we not dare to brave ' the great anger of " Pere Duchesne " ' ?
— to gain thus the great victory awaited by the French people ;
the victory over the ultra-revolutionaries as well as the counter-
revolutionaries ; the victory over all those who intrigue, all
the rascals, all the ambitious, all the enemies of the public
well-being ? , . . Let us occupy ourselves, oh, my colleagues,
not in defending our own lives like sick men, but in defending
our liberty and our principles like Republicans ! And even if,
which seems impossible, calumny and crime should, for a
moment, triumph over virtue, can one believe that, even upon
the scaffold, sustained by the consciousness that I have loved
my country and the Republic passionately, sustained by the
thought of the eternal testimony of the centuries, surrounded
by the esteem and regret of all true republicans ; can one
believe, I say, that I would wish to change my fate for the
fortune of that miserable Hebert, who, in his journal, drives to
despair twenty classes of citizens and more than three millions
of Frenchmen, of whom he says anathema, and whom he con-
signs to death sweepingly, in one common conscription ; who,
to stiffe his remorse and his calumnies, has been obliged to
resort to a drunkenness more complete than that of wine, and
to lick, unceasingly, the blood at the foot of the guillotine !

" What then is the scaffold for a patriot save the pedestal of
Sidney and of Jean de Witt ? What in this time of warfare,
where I have seen my two brothers mutilated and hacked for
liberty, what is the guillotine more than a sabre-cut, and the
most glorious of all deaths for a deputy who dies, the victim of
his courage and of his republicanism ? "

In the course of this number Camille, speaking of
his early republicanism, boasted that : " Certainly,
the ' Procureur General de la Lanterne,' in 1789,
was as good a revolutionary as Hebert, who, at that
time, opened the doors to him, bowing to the ground."

This reference was an ill-timed one on Camille's
part. He laid himself open thereby to the attack of
Hebert, who assailed him with a weapon which was.

254 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

of all those that could be used, the one most calculated
to wound him deeply. Camille cared nothing for
accusations of moderatism, or even royalism, but it
was left to the " Pere Duchesne " to assail him in his
most vulnerable spot, to recall the remembrance of his
former errors.

This is " The answer of J. R. Hebert, author of the
' Pere Duchesne,' to Camille Desmouhns and Com-
pany."

" Here, my brave sans-culottes, here is a great man whom
you have forgotten ; it is truly ungrateful of you, for he
declares that, without him, there would never have been a
revolution. Formerly he called himself ' Procureur General de
la Lanterne.' You think I am speaking of that famous cut-
throat whose celebrated beard made the aristocrats take
flight ; no, he of whom we speak boasts that he is the most
pacific of men. To believe him, he has no more gall than a
pigeon ; he is so sensitive that he never hears the word ' guillo-
tine ' without shivering to his very bones ; he is a great teacher,
who, in his own person, has more wisdom than all the patriots
put together, and more judgment than the entire Convention ;
it is a great pity that he cannot speak : or he would prove to
the ' Moniteur ' and the Committee of Public Safety that
they have no common sense. But, if he cannot speak. Master
Camille can make up for it by writing, to the great satisfaction
of the moderates, Royalists, and aristocrats."

There was a terrible undercurrent of truth beneath
these words of Hebert's which caused them to be
almost unanswerable.

Ill

A T last Camille had gone too far. Even while

/% he still believed that he was expressing the
A — % sentiments of Robespierre, that same
JL JL. " old comrade " was preparing to desert
him. Whatever his private views may have been, the
elder man dared not risk the loss of his popularity.
He had that complete control over his feelings
which Camille, fortunately for humanity, did not
possess.

On December 21st, as we have seen, Collot d'Herbois
returned from Lyons, and at once showed himself as
Camille's enemy. The journalist says, in the fifth
number of the " Vieux Cordelier," that Collot
attacked him at the Jacobins early in Nivose, but " not
by name." It would seem, nevertheless, that Camille
was indicated quite unmistakably in one of those
melodramatic speeches, by means of which the ex-
actor was in the habit of appealing to the gallery.
" He made a veritable tragedy," writes Camille, " to
excite the passions of the tribunes against me."

There was a special session of the Jacobins on
Nivose 1 6th (January 5th), the very day on which
the fifth number of the " Vieux Cordelier " was
for sale. The hall was densely crowded, and very
high prices were paid to obtain seats to hear the
debate.

Collot had gauged the feeling of the Club ; he knew
that the sympathy of the majority of the members was
with him. Accordingly he rose at the opening of the
session to demand that the conduct of Camille and
Philippeaux be examined into further. On the whole,

255

256 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

his speech was more moderate than might have been
expected. His attack was directed especially against
Philippeaux, whom he accused, in effect, of conspiring
against the Revolution with Fabre d'Eglantine and
others.

Collot treated Camille much more gently. He said
that he was convinced of the journalist's genuine
patriotism, but believed that he had been misled by
bad company. In words that were patronisingly
contemptuous, he advised Camille to be more careful
in the future, and asked only that the rash writer
should be censured.

Now Collot, knowingly or unknowingly, had chosen
the very worst line to take where Camille was con-
cerned. Burning to prove that he was not to be
treated thus lightly, the journalist demanded that his
last number should be read aloud immediately, since
it contained his own defence.

When this motion was proposed by the President,
Hebert violently opposed the reading of Camille's
paper. Doubtless he had already seen it, and he
dreaded the effect upon the Club of that astounding
and crushing indictment of himself which the number
contained.

" Camille wishes to turn people's attention from
himself, to complicate the discussion ! " cried Hebert.
" He accuses me of having robbed the treasury — it is
an infamous falsehood ! "

" I have the proofs of it in my hand ! " shouted
back Camille.

As may be imagined, such words as these caused an
immense sensation. Robespierre the younger rose in
an attempt to calm the tumult which ensued.

" These personalities should not be allowed," he
said. " The Society does not meet to protect private
reputations ; if Hebert is a thief, what does it matter
to us ? Those who have reproaches to make ought not
to interrupt the general discussion."

THE SOUTH WIND 257

" I have nothing with which to reproach myself ! "
cried Hebert, furious at this contemptuous dismissal
of his case.

" The dissensions in the departments are your work,"
retorted Augustin Robespierre. " You have helped to
stir them up by attacking the liberty of the sects."

This downright accusation silenced Hebert, and
Maximilian Robespierre now rose to speak. He was
more moderate and conciliatory than his younger
brother had been, but scarcely less bitter against
Hebert. He endeavoured to pacify all parties,
insisting that these personal quarrels ought to be laid
aside when the interests of the Republic were at stake.
Robespierre, however, showed plainly enough what
were his feelings with regard to Hebert. He inferred,
in fact, that it was unnecessary to discuss Camille's
attacks upon the editor of " Pere Duchesne," since all
the world knew how well-founded they were.

Finally Robespierre insisted that the debate should
be confined to CoUot's original motion, the discussion
of Philippeaux's conduct in attacking the leaders of the
army in La Vendee. Camille and his affairs were
shelved for the time being. The remainder of this
sitting was occupied in the cross-questioning of a large
number of witnesses against Philippeaux.

On Nivose i8th (January 7th) this business should
have been resumed, but the principal person concerned
was not present. Philippeaux absented himself,
thoroughly weary of the seemingly endless discussion
of his conduct and motives. The Club accordingly
turned its attention to the affairs of Bourdon (de
I'Oise), Fabre d'Eglantine and Camille. Their names
were called three times without any reply being
received, but just as Robespierre made the suggestion
that public opinion should judge them in their
absence, Camille appeared in the hall.

He was at once summoned to explain his relations
with Philippeaux, and the unguarded way in which he

258 CAMILLE E^ESMOULINS

had praised both him and his pamphlet. Camille
answered these accusations somewhat evasively. He
said, in effect, what was in fact true, that he scarcely
knew Philippeaux personally. He had been carried
away by his writings, without enquiring into their
truth : he retracted his ill-considered praise, and, in
short, had no opinion in the matter, one way or the
other.

It must be confessed that this self-defence of
Camille's did not carry conviction ; by tacitly con-
fessing that he had been over-hasty and lacking in
judgment, he laid himself open to accusations of
weakness, if no worse.

It is plain that the subterfuge by which, on the 1 6th
Nivose, Robespierre had prevented No. 5 of the
" Vieux Cordelier " from being read aloud, was kindly
meant. He had no wish to sacrifice Camille ; it would
seem that he was as fond of him as his cold nature
permitted, and the journalist did not stand in his path
to dictatorship as did Danton.

Yet it is impossible not to suspect self-interest
beneath this seeming tolerance. It must be re-
membered that the " Vieux Cordelier " had been
published hitherto under the auspices of Robespierre ;
he had corrected the proofs of most of the issues, it is
probable that he had even seen this very No. 5 before
it was printed. But a fortnight had elapsed between
the completion and the publication of this fifth issue,
and Robespierre had had time to repent of his temerity
in lending his support to Camille's enterprise, to see
plainly whither all this was tending, and to resolve
that he would not be implicated in the downfall of the
headstrong journalist.

If Camille had yielded gracefully and obediently to
Robespierre's will ; if he had abjured his over-bold
writings, pleaded that he had indeed been misled in
publishing them, it is possible that he might have
been saved. But Camille, to his everlasting honour,

THE SOUTH WIND 259

did not retract that which he had written, and if, in
consequence, he lost his Hfe, he gained hy that
stubbornness the respect of future generations.

After Camille's hesitating apology for his eulogies of
Philippeaux, Robespierre rose to defend his young
colleague. We must remember, in common justice,
that there is this to be said for the method which
Maximilian adopted ; it was probably the only possible
way by which, if Camille had been disposed to take
advantage of it, he might have been saved from the
fury of the extreme party and those of the Committee
who were his violent personal enemies. The fault of
Robespierre's defence lay in the fact that he had taken
up the worst possible line of treatment as far as
Camille, personally, was concerned ; and this he did,
probably, from sheer ignorance of human nature, and
want of appreciation of a character so alien to his own
as was that of the journalist.

" I have several times taken up the defence of
Camille," said Robespierre. " I permitted myself
then some reflections on his character ; friendship
allowed this ; but to-day I am forced to adopt
a different tone. Camille promised to abjure the
political heresies, the erroneous, ill-sounding proposi-
tions which cover all the pages of the ' Vieux Cor-
delier.' Camille, puffed by the prodigious success
of his numbers, and the perfidious praise that the
aristocrats heap upon him, has not abandoned the
path which error had traced for him. His writings are
dangerous ; they nourish the hopes of our enemies and
favour public malignity. . . . The writings of Camille
are condemnable ; but notwithstanding it is necessary
to distinguish carefully the person from his works.
Camille is a spoilt child who has good dispositions, but
whom bad companions have misled. It is necessary
to protest against his numbers, which Brissot himself
would not have dared to avow, and to preserve
Desmoulins in the midst of us. I demand, in conse-

26o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

quence, that the numbers of Camille's paper shall be
burnt in the Society."

During Robespierre's speech Camille's anger and
indignation had been growing to fever heat. He was
both bewildered and infuriated at this change of front
on the part of his friend. Could this be Robespierre
who was speaking — Robespierre, who had guided his
pen in the beginning, who had corrected the proofs
of the " Vieux Cordelier " with his own hand ?
Disregarding the veiled threats, Camille chafed
impotently at the contemptuous indulgence of Robes-
pierre's tone.

At last he saw his opportunity ; the speaker gave him
the opening for a retort. Without pause for con-
sideration Camille sprang from his seat.

" That is all very well, Robespierre ! " he cried,
clearly and without his usual stammer. " But I reply,
like Rousseau : ' To burn is not to answer ! ' "

At this bold retort Robespierre lost patience. It is
probable that he was really conscious of doing the best
he could for Camille, seeing that it was not in the
nature of the man to defend another at the expense
of his own safety and popularity. Since the fool
would not be saved, let him go his own way, even if it
led him to destruction. It was in vain that Danton
tried to explain matters, to make peace between the
two angry men.

" Do not be afraid, Camille," he said, " at the
rather severe lesson which Robespierre, out of his
strong feeling of friendship, has just given you."

Even if Danton had been able to appease Camille,
he could not soothe Robespierre. The latter answered
Camille's daring challenge with a bitter vindictiveness
which should have warned the young man that he
had indeed gone too far.

" So be it," replied Robespierre. " We will answer,
then, instead of burning, since Camille still defends
his writings. If he wishes it, let him be covered with

THE SOUTH WIND 261

ignominy ; let the Society restrain its indignation no
longer, since he is obstinate in maintaining his dia-
tribes and his dangerous principles. I was evidently
mistaken in believing that he was merely misled ; if
he had been in good faith, if he had merely written
in the simplicity of his heart, he would not have dared
to uphold works which are proscribed by patriots
and welcomed by counter - revolutionaries. His
courage is only borrowed ; it betrays someone con-
cealed, who has dictated what he has written in his
journal ; it betrays that Desmoulins is the organ of a
rascally faction which has borrowed his pen to spread
its poison with all the more audacity and sureness.
Let Camille be judged out of his own mouth ; let his
numbers be read to the Society immediately."

And then, speaking to Camille directly, with
venomous irritation, Robespierre added : —

" Learn, that if thou hadst not been Camille, we
should not have had so much indulgence for thee. The
manner in which thou seekest to justify thyself proves
to me that thou hast bad intentions."

Too late Camille saw the mistake he had made in
browbeating Robespierre. He tried to obtain a
hearing, that he might speak in his own defence, but
the Society refused to listen to him. They at once
proceeded to hear the debatable numbers of the
" Vieux Cordelier."

At this sitting a secretary read aloud the daring
fourth number, and the ceremony was continued next
day. On this occasion the famous No. 3 was read by
Momoro, once Camille's overprudent printer of the
" France Libre," now the most violent of ultra-
revolutionaries.

At the end of the session Robespierre spoke again,
and incidentally showed his own hand very plainly.
Camille, he said again, with contemptuous patronage,
Camille was a strange mixture of truth and falsehood,
of cleverness and self-deception. Whether the Jacobins

262 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

retained or expelled him mattered very little ; he was
only an individual. The interests of the nation,
Robespierre added, were menaced by two parties, the
counter-revolutionaries and the ultra-revolutionaries —
" Both Camille and Hebert are equally wrong in my
eyes."

The result of all this discussion appeared, at least
for the moment, to be fairly satisfactory as far as
Camille was concerned. He was not expelled from
the Jacobins ; he was even tacitly permitted to retain
his membership, although it appears that he rarely
went to the Club again after this date, but the
Cordeliers passed an ominous resolution on hearing
of the apparent moderation of the sister Club.

They decreed that : " Camille, already excluded
from their ranks, had also lost their confidence,
although formerly he had rendered great services to
the Revolution."

There was no doubt that the Moderates were dis-
credited and distrusted, at least by those in power.
As for the others, who had welcomed Camille's appeal
for clemency so enthusiastically, they could do nothing
to direct the course of events ; nobody, as yet, dared
to oppose the Great Committee, and the Committee
was resolved upon the downfall of the Dantonists.

At last Camille fully realised his own danger and the
inevitable end of his course of action. Robespierre's
attitude must needs have opened his eyes. Yet, on
the whole, it is plain that he did not regret what he
had done. There is a story told by Jules Claretie and
repeated in a slightly different form by M. Lenotre,
which reveals clearly enough the attitude of mind of
both Camille and his wife.

Brune, the future marshal of the Empire and their
devoted friend, was breakfasting with the pair one
morning. The guest was depressed and full of
mournful forebodings, and he felt impelled to warn
Camille of the grave danger which he ran by con-

THE SOUTH WIND 263

tinuing to publish the " Vieux Cordelier." But
Camille and Lucile refused to be intimidated, and the
young wife said, with serious confidence, as she poured
out the chocolate for their friend : —

" Let him alone, Brune. Let him fulfil his mission.
He must save his country."

And Camille answered more lightly, playing with
his little boy as he spoke : —

" Pooh ! What matter ? Edamus et bibamus, eras
enim moriemur ! "

It was not always that Camille could laugh thus at
the danger which threatened him and those whom he
loved. There is a passage in the works of a contempo-
rary writer which shows us what a dark cloud of
depression had habitually settled now upon the spirits
of the highly strung, sensitive journalist.

One Miot de Melito, a brilliant man of affairs, who
was later to take a prominent part in the politics of
the Napoleonic era, was at this time attached to the
Ministry of War at Paris. The young diplomatist
tells us that he dined frequently at the house of
Deforgues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that
he often met Camille at these gatherings. The whole
passage gives such a vivid impression of the journalist's
bodily and mental attitude at this time that it is best
to reproduce it at length.

" Camille Desmoulins," Miot de Melito writes, " was also
amongst the number of those who dined pretty frequently at
Deforgues'. His personal appearance was commonplace, he
had no external advantages, nor did his conversation belie the
grudging hand with which nature had endowed him. Gloomy
and silent, his countenance wore an expression of profound
melancholy, and it was difficult to recognise the orator of the
early days of the revolution of 1789, the orator who, standing
on a chair at the Palais Royal, had by his stirring words pro-
duced the great popular movement of that famous period.

" At the time when I was in the habit of seeing him, he was
horror-struck at the terrible scenes which passed before his
eyes every day, and was endeavouring to arouse a spirit of

264 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

humanity. In several numbers of a newspaper entitled the
' Vieux Cordelier ' which was edited by him, he ventured
(for it was then an act of the greatest courage) to advocate a
return to clemency. Danton laughed at him for what he
chose to call his weakness, but Camille Desmoulins, who
was also excluded by each so-called patriotic society for having
advocated these new doctrines, made no reply.

" His gloom announced that he already foresaw the fate
awaiting him, and the few words that he uttered were always
enquiries or observations on the sentences of the Revolutionary
Tribunal, on the kind of death inflicted on the condemned,
and on the most dignified and decorous way of preparing for
and enduring it."

It is strange to note how this idea of dying with
decorum had always obsessed Camille. At the very
beginning of his literary career, in one of the early
numbers of the " Revolutions de France et de Bra-
bant," he dwells on the same subject when he is
speaking of the ignominious death of the royalist
Marquis de Favras.

" The firmness with which he died was that of a gladiator,
who, being mortally wounded, strives to fall with decency
and dignity."

The same thought haunted Camille once more,
save that now it was his own death which he had in
mind, that death which intuition and common sense
alike must have warned him was drawing near.

But by far the most living picture of the life of
Camille and his wife at this time is to be found in a
letter from Lucile herself to Freron. Camille's
former sub-editor was on mission from the Convention
at Toulon. He was employing against the Royalists
in that unfortunate town all the most extreme
" terrorist " methods, to put down the counter-
revolutionary rising, and earning for himself a name and
a reputation very different from that of the " Lapin "
Freron of those old happy days at Bourg-la-Reine.
Freron had written to the Desmoulins a short time

THE SOUTH WIND 265

before, at the beginning of the movement for clemency.
It is in this letter that he recalls so charmingly their
pleasant time of companionship in a passage which has
already been quoted. Later, he shows himself very
much at variance with Camille's new ideas. He
advises him to bridle his imagination with regard to
the Committee of Clemency.

" It would be a triumph for the counter-revolutionaries
Do not let his philanthropy blind him ; but wage war to the
knife with all these patriot-adventurers."

It is probably this same letter of Freron's to which
Camille referred in No. 5 of the " Vieux Cordelier."
In this number he defended his friend against the
attacks of Hebert, who " calls Freron, as he calls me, a
heretofore patriot, a muscadin, a Sardanapalus "

There follows an impassioned apostrophe from
Camille : —

" Oh, my dear Freron, it is by means of gross artifices indeed
that the patriots of August loth undermine the pillars of the
ancient district of the Cordeliers ! You wrote ten days ago to
my wife : ' I dream only of Toulon, where I shall either perish,
or deliver it up to the Republic : I depart. The cannonade
will begin as soon as I arrive ; we go to win either laurels or a
willow branch ; prepare the one or the other for me.' Oh,
my brave Freron, we have both of us wept for joy at hearing
this morning of the victory of the Republic, and it is laurels
that we shall bear before thee, instead of laying the willow
upon thy ashes."

Lucile answered Freron's letter some weeks later,
upon the 24th Nivose. She is writing very soon after
that terrible sitting of the Jacobins upon the i8th
Nivose, when Robespierre finally repudiated the man
who had been his tool, — and his friend. Probably poor
Camille was too sick at heart to write himself. It is
Lucile who defends her husband's actions and policy
against the miscomprehension of their old comrade,
writing with all the spirit and enthusiasm of a

266 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

woman whose adored husband has been attacked and
betrayed.

" Come back, Freron, come back quickly. You have no time
to lose : bring with you all the old Cordeliers you can meet
with ; we have the greatest need of them ; if it had pleased
Heaven not to have ever dispersed them ! You cannot have an
idea of what is doing here ! You are ignorant of everything ;
you only see a feeble glimmering in the distance, which can
give you but a faint idea of our situation. Indeed, I am not
surprised that you reproach Camille for his Committee of
Clemency. He cannot be judged from Toulon. You are
happy where you are ; all has gone according to the wish of
your heart ; but we, calumniated, persecuted by the ignorant,
the intriguing, and even by patriots ! Robespierre, your head-
piece, has denounced Camille to the Jacobins ; he has had
Numbers 3 and 4 read and has demanded that they should be
burnt ; he, who had read them in manuscript — can you
conceive such a thing ? For two consecutive sittings he has
thundered or rather shrieked against Camille, At the third
sitting Camille's name was cancelled. Oddly enough, he
made inconceivable efforts to have the cancelling reported ;
it was reported ; but he saw that when he did not think or act
according to the will of a certain number of individuals, he
was not all powerful. Marius (Danton) is not listened to any
more ; he is losing courage and vigour. D'Eglantine is
arrested, and in the Luxembourg. So he was not a patriot !
He who had been one until now ! A patriot the less is a
misfortune the more.

" The monsters have dared to reproach Camille with having
married a rich woman. Ah, let them never speak of me ; let
them ignore my existence, let me live in the midst of a desert.
I ask nothing from them, I will give up to them all I possess,
provided I do not breathe the same air as they ; could I but
forget them and all the evils they cause us. I see nothing but
misfortune around me. I confess, I am too weak to bear such a
sight. Life has become a heavy burden. I cannot even think, —
thinking, once such a pure and sweet pleasure, alas, I am de-
prived of it. My eyes fill with tears. I shut up this terrible
sorrow in my heart ; I meet Camille with a serene look. I
affect courage that he may keep up his. You do not seem to
have read his five numbers. Yet you are a subscriber.

THE SOUTH WIND 267

" Yes, the wild thyme is gathered, quite ready. I plucked it
amid many cares. I laugh no more ; I never act the cat ; I
never touch my piano ; I dream no more : I am nothing but
a machine now. I see no one, I never go out. It is a long time
since I have seen the Roberts. They have got into difficulties
through their own fault. They are trying to be forgotten.
Farewell, Lapin, you will call me mad again. I am not, however,
quite yet ; I still have enough reason left to suffer.

" I cannot express to you my joy in learning that your dear
sister had met with no accident ; I have been quite uneasy
since I heard Toulon was taken. I wondered incessantly what
would be their fate. Speak to them sometimes from me.
Embrace them both from me. I beg them to do the same to
you for me.

" Do you hear ? My Loup cried out : ' Martin, my dear
Martin, here, thou art come that I may embrace thee ; come
back very soon.'

" Come back, come back very soon, we are awaiting thee
impatiently."

Nothing could possibly make us realise better what
Lucile's life was at this time — a life which must also
have been that of many another loving, anxious wife
and mother. She knew, as well as Camille himself, the
daily and hourly danger which her husband ran. It is
plain from this letter that she suffered the added misery
of knowing that her supposed, wholly imaginary wealth
was one of the reproaches directed against Camille.

There is infinite pathos and infinite tenderness in
the words which describe how she " shuts up this
terrible sorrow in her heart " — " meets Camille with a
serene look " — " affects courage that he may keep up
his." We can imagine that this was no easy task, this
keeping up of Camille's courage, whilst her own heart
ached so unbearably. For Camille, sensitive, volatile
Camille, must have been difficult to soothe and calm
now that his enemies were closing in on every side,
whilst he saw his popularity slipping away from his
grasp, leaving him to meet their attacks, defenceless.
Poor Camille, whose one preoccupation now was how

268 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

to die decently ; one can fancy that his thoughts and
words must have wounded Lucile's loving heart.

The sixth number of the " Vieux Cordelier,"
although dated Nivose loth, did not in reality appear
until Pluviose 15th (February, 1794).

At the forefront of this issue Camille printed two
mottoes. One was a quotation from Valerius Maximus :
" Peregrinatus est, animus ejus in nequitia non
habitavit." For his other epigraph the journalist
used an extract from CoUot d'Herbois' speech at the
Jacobins, thus trying to turn the words of one of his
deadliest enemies to good account, with a kind of
despairing recklessness.

" Camille Desmoulins," CoUot had said, " fait une
debauche d'esprit avec les aristocrates ; mais il est
toujours bon republicain et il lui est impossible d'etre
autre chose."

This sixth number, with its unfinished " Credo
Politique du Vieux Cordelier," was rather more
orthodox from the point of view of the " Mountain "
than its predecessors. Nevertheless, with one of those
errors of judgment for which we love him, Camille
breaks off in this quite legitimate creed of his to relate
the incident of the arrest of his father-in-law, who
had been imprisoned on a charge of conspiracy in the
Carmelite Convent, in a fashion which can scarcely be
called respectful towards the laws and manners of the
Republic.

He again insists that the law of kindness would prove
to be more powerful than that of terror as the order of
the day, and he declares that he has from the first hoped
and preached that the Republic would bring peace and
happiness rather than misery and terror in its train.
_ In a postscript to this number Camille attacks
Hebert once more, almost for the last time, with most
terrible and bitter raillery.

" Miracle ! " he cries. " Grand conversion of Pere
Duchesne ! ' I have already said a hundred times,' writes he

THE SOUTH WIND 269

in one of his last numbers, ' and I will say it always that one
should imitate the sansculotte Jesus ! That one should obey
the letter of the Gospel and live in peace with all men. . . .'
" When Hebert speaks thus, I shall be the first to cry : ' The
National Treasury cannot pay too highly for such numbers ! '
Continue, Hebert ; the divine sans-culotte whom you quote
has also said : ' There is more joy in Heaven over one Pere
Duchesne who repents, than over ninety-nine Vieux Cordeliers
who need no repentance.' But you ought to remember to
have read in the same book : ' Thou shalt not say to thy
brother, Raca, that is to say, viedase. Thou shalt not lie.' "

During the early spring of 1794 Robespierre con-
tinued to attack the Hebertist faction relentlessly.
The " ultras " did not fall without a struggle. Carrier,
the butcher of Nantes, hero of " noyades " and of
deeds unspeakable, thundered from the tribune of the
Cordeliers, whilst Hebert, in the " Pere Duchesne "
threatened and raved, with the fear of death before
his eyes.

It was all in vain. One day towards the end of
March stern, implacable Saint-Just rose in the Conven-
tion and denounced Hebert and his faction. In cold,
pitiless phrases he reviewed their misdeeds, and
secured their condemnation. On March 24th the
" ultras," Hebert, Momoro, Clootz, Ronsin and the
rest, went to their death.

Camille had played no small part in bringing about
the downfall of this party ; perhaps for that reason he
hoped that he might still escape denunciation. Prob-
ably, too, his close association with Danton gave him
confidence, for Danton despised the Committee and
all its works, and, up to the very end, when warned that
they plotted his downfall, repeated that they " would
not dare."

Yet, in a measure, the great Tribune of the people
had lost his power. His grip on public opinion had
slackened ; that withdrawal to Arcis at a crisis in the
historv of the Revolution was to cost him dear. The

270 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Terror had progressed without Danton, it had out-
stripped him. He, the mover and creator of the
insurrection of August loth, was now considered almost
a " moderate."

And Robespierre, he who had said : " Both Camille
and Hebert are equally wrong in my eyes," also feared
Danton. There was too much brutal, far-reaching
humanity in this man to fit in with his narrow, well-
regulated schemes for the well-being of France and of
France's regenerator, Maximilian Robespierre. Danton
would probably spread disorder through the inhuman
Utopia of Robespierre and Saint-Just : it would be
far better if he were removed.

Camille had yet another source of confidence. He
knew that he had fallen from the favour of those in
power, he knew that most of his former friends had
deserted him, but he did not believe that the people
would allow him to be sacrificed. Camille had not,
as yet, learnt that lesson which almost all the leaders
of the Revolution had, sooner or later, to lay to heart —
the lesson that no dependence could be placed in the
mob. He knew that he had once been popular ; he
did not comprehend that the rapid sequence of events
had entirely blotted from the minds of the people of
Paris the remembrance of his services, those services
of which he had reminded his readers so eloquently
in the fifth number of the " Vieux Cordelier."

The spring came early to France that year of 1794.
We have the evidence of many contemporaries to
prove that it was long enough since such perfect
weather had been known at that season. At the
beginning of March, it was hot and almost summer-
like. The woods all round Paris had broken into their
young leaves ; the Seine danced and sparkled beneath
a sky of unclouded blue. As the month drew on the
lilacs in the gardens of the Luxembourg began to
bloom before their time, scenting the air with their
hot, clean fragrance.

THE SOUTH WIND 271

Perhaps during those anxious days Camille and
Lucile sometimes walked together there, beneath the
flowering trees. One would like to think so, and to
believe that they forgot, for a moment, their present
dangers and forebodings in recalling those past happy
hours of their life, which these same gardens had
witnessed.

It was here that Camille had first met the child who
was to be his wife ; it was here also that, a few short
weeks later, he was to see her for the last time on earth.

Yet although the shadow of their approaching fate
hung over these two who were all in all to each other,
full knowledge was mercifully spared them. We may be
very sure that even during these last months there were
happy hours, spaces when all their sorrows were for-
gotten as they listened to little Horace's baby prattle.
Fortunately, a sudden and violent death is unrealisable
to a man in the full enjoyment of his health and
strength. In moments of despondency Camille may
have honestly believed that he expected and was
prepared for death, but the moments were probably
far more frequent when he was confident that somehow
or other he would yet escape.

Meanwhile the journalist was engaged in writing
the seventh number of the " Vieux Cordelier." After
the first three issues the paper had not appeared with
any pretence of regularity : in fact, it was never a
journal in the same sense as the " Revolutions de
France." This last number was belated indeed ; it
never appeared in Camille's lifetime.

Had it done so, it might only have made his con-
demnation the more sure, for it was bold : bolder
even than its predecessors. Indeed, according to
Michelet, the allusions to Robespierre in this seventh
number of the " Vieux Cordelier " actually did lead
to the author's arrest.

The pamphlet takes the form of an imaginary
conversation between Camille himself and a typical

272 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

" old Cordelier." When Desenne, the publisher,
saw the proofs of this No. 7 he took fright and declared
that he dared not print it. He was not so bold as
Camille ; moreover he had none of the journalist's
reasons for personal animosity. The attacks on
Robespierre were too flagrant and too obvious ; it did
not certainly require any very extraordinary degree of
perspicacity to guess who was intended by such a
passage as this : " Car jamais ces tyrans n'ont manque
de juger pour faire perir, sous le pretexte de calomnies,
quiconque leur deplaisait."

In another place Camille writes still more openly,
comparing Robespierre and Danton to Octavius and
Antony, much to the disadvantage of the former.

In spite of Desenne's protests, Camille insisted that
the number should be published exactly as he had
written it, without alterations. The proofs passed
to and fro, and were doubtless read by many people.
It is exceedingly probable that Robespierre heard of
Camille's contemplated attack upon him, and deter-
mined that he must be silenced, although Michelet
would have us believe that it was with extreme
reluctance that he consented to the arrest of the
journalist.

Camille's seventh number is, in many respects, a
very noteworthy piece of work. Once again, and for
the last time, he claims the liberty of the Press,
although he allows that there may be danger to the
State where each writer gives free vent to his own
personal opinions — a strange sentiment this, coming
from Camille !

He bitterly taunts the members of the Convention
with cowardice : —

" If a deputy feels himself obliged to declare his sentiments,
good or bad, nothing is more pleasant for the Republican who
follows these sittings than to observe with what ' ifs ' and ' buts,'
' yeas ' and ' nays,' what concessions, circumlocutions and
oratorical precautions he envelops his meaning, for fear the

THE SOUTH WIND 273

guillotine should find a way to the neck of it. . . . Not one of
you dares give utterance on the morrow to the opinion you
have agreed upon the day before. Each of you waits for the
others. ... I, on this celebrated Mountain, have merely,
seen mice deliberating, while no one dared to bell the cat."

Further on, he is even more vehement.

" I contend that we have never been so enslaved as since
we have called ourselves Republicans, that we have never
grovelled so abjectly before men in credit and in place as
since we have spoken with them, hat on head."

Camille concludes the number with another instal-
ment of his political " Credo," in some respects braver
and more generous than anything which he had yet
written.

" I believe that Liberty is humanity ; thus I believe that
Liberty would not prevent the relations of prisoners from
seeing their fathers, their husbands, or their sons ; I believe
that Liberty would not condemn the mother of Barnave to
knock in vain for eight hours at the door of the Conciergerie,
in the hope of speaking to her son, and when this unhappy
woman had accomplished a hundred leagues in spite of her
great age, to oblige her, to see him yet once again, to wait for
him upon the road to the scaffold. ... I believe that Liberty
is magnanimous : she would not insult a condemned criminal
at the foot of the guillotine, and after his execution, because
death wipes out the crime."

To those who contend that Camille was a mere paid
politician, whose pen was at the service of the highest
bidder, this number is surely a sufficient refutation.
There is no retractation here, no drawing back from
the position which he had taken up, although now he
was left, unsupported, upon that solitary and dangerous
height.

It is plain, surely, that sorrow and the imminent
shadow of death had worked a great miracle in
Camille ; the faun had become a very human man.
For long, he and Barnave, the great orator of the first

274 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Assembly, had been strenuously opposed in policy.
Friends they could never have been ; their tempera-
ments were too entirely dissimilar. Yet Camille
wrote no words which haunt one's memory more
than these few lines in which he speaks of Barnave and
his widowed mother.

On one of the last days of March, an old teacher of
Camille's at the College Louis-le-Grand met the
journalist in the Rue St. Honore, carrying a bundle of
papers under his arm.

" What have you there, Camille ? " he asked.

" Only some numbers of my ' Vieux Cordelier,' "
answered the young man. " Will you have one ? "

" No, indeed ! It is too dangerous ; they burn 1 "

" Coward ! " laughed Camille, and quoted once
more that favourite line of his : " Edamus et bibamus,
eras enim moriemur."

" To-morrow we die " Camille did not guess

how almost literally true his words were to prove.

IV

THE first direct move against the party of the
" Indulgents " was made in the middle of
March, when Herault de Sechelles was
expelled from the Committee of Public
Safety. A few days later he was arrested and im-
prisoned, on various trumped-up charges of treasonable
conspiracy.

This arrest was an open threat to Danton, since
Herault was his intimate friend. Yet when those
around him implored him to escape, he heard them
with seeming indifference.

" There is nothing to be done," he said. " Resist ?
No, enough blood has been shed ; I would rather die
myself. I prefer to be guillotined rather than to
guillotine." And, when they still urged flight : " Does
a man carry his fatherland on the soles of his shoes ? "

Arguments and entreaties were useless with one
who would only answer :

" I know that they wish to arrest me, but no — they
will not dare ! "

There is something grand in this confidence, ill-
founded as it was. It is not surprising if it inspired
Camille with the same feeling, accustomed as he was
to rely upon the judgment of those whom he respected
and trusted.

During the last days of March sinister rumours
spread. It was whispered that the arrest of the
Dantonists was imminent, and the Members of the
Committee maintained an obstinate silence when
questioned. A fairly well authenticated story tells

275

276 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

how someone dared to speak to Robespierre himself
of his ancient friendship for Danton, asking him to
intervene in his favour. Robespierre is said to have
answered that he could do nothing, either for or
against his colleague, that justice was there to defend
innocence, that, as far as he himself was concerned, his
entire life had been a continual sacrifice of his affec-
tions to the fatherland : and that, if his friend were
guilty, he would sacrifice him with regret, but still
he would sacrifice him, like all the others, to the
Republic.

It is very probable that this was the light in which
Robespierre viewed himself, and that he thus expressed
his intentions.

Six days after the execution of the Hebertists, upon
March 29th (9th of Germinal), there was a sudden
outbreak of counter-revolutionary feeling in Paris.
The downfall of the " ultras " had led many to think
that the Terror was at an end, and there was talk of a
revolt against the extreme Republican party.

That same evening Legendre rose at the Jacobins
to protest against the widespread belief that such an
anti-revolutionary project was to be attributed to his
friends, " the indulgents." This well-meant but
exceedingly ill-advised speech drew forth an open
threat from CoUot d'Herbois.

" Be calm ! " he cried. " Such plans will be dis-
appointed. We have caused a thunderbolt to fall
upon the infamous men who deceived the people, we
have torn the mask from them, but they are not the
only ones ! . . . We will tear away all possible masks.
The ' indulgents ' need not imagine that we have
fought for them, that it is for them that we have held
here these glorious sessions ! Soon we shall know
how to undeceive them."

On the following day, March 30th, an extraordinary
meeting was convoked of the two great Committees,
sitting together, as was their practice on important occa-

THE SOUTH WIND 277

sions. The Committee of Legislation was also sum-
moned, to give more authority still to the proceedings.

At this meeting, Saint-Just was the principal speaker.
He denounced the Dantonists with all the force and
eloquence at his command, charging them with
" moderatism " and "reaction" in much the same
terms as Camille himself had used in the accusations
which he brought against the Girondins. Finally, he
demanded the arrest of the whole party of the " in-
dulgents."

Saint-Just's personality and the knowledge that he
was Robespierre's mouthpiece swayed the united
Committees, and they jointly signed the warrant for
the arrest of the Dantonists. Only a very few had the
courage to withhold their names ; amongst them were
Ruhl and Robert Lindet. At the close of the sitting,
these two men sent Panis to warn Danton that the
warrant was actually signed.

The perturbed messenger found Danton at home,
sitting by the fire in his study. It is from M. Robinet
that we learn how the great Tribune passed this, his
last evening of freedom. He sat silently by the hearth,
grave and preoccupied, with the glow of the flames
falling upon his rugged face.

Maybe his thoughts had strayed to the days of his
boyhood in Arcis, that pleasant, homely Arcis, where
he had won back a little peace of mind but a few
months before. It would perhaps have been well for
Danton if he had not returned to his birthplace during
those stormy autumn months of 1793 ; well for
Danton if, having returned, he had remained there,
far from the turmoil of the capital and the stress of
party warfare.

The errand of Panis was fruitless. Even now Danton
would not fly. He was disturbed by the news, we read ;
he paced with long strides up and down the room,
muttering broken sentences to himself, and pausing now
and then to embrace his nephew, but still he would not

278 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

seek a place of safety. He was sick of revolution and
bloodshed — sick of life, if it must be bought at such a
cost. It was thus that Danton awaited his arrest.

Meanwhile it was with a very heavy heart that
Camille watched through the long hours of that March
night. He had a more personal grief to sadden him
than had Danton, something which, for a moment,
outweighed those anxieties which had become custo-
mary and part of his life. Only that morning he had
received a letter from his father, telling him that the
mother, whom he so tenderly loved, was dead.
It is long since Camille had seen his parents ; in
his letters he often speaks of a visit which he hopes
to pay to them, but that visit, it seems, had never
taken place. Yet the old tie of love uniting the parents
and the son remained as strong as ever.

It has sometimes been asserted that Camille was
on bad terms with his father, and it is true that the
impetuous son was often irritated by what he con-
sidered, quite unjustly, to be coldness and lack of
enthusiasm on the part of the elder man. In the days
of his first great success Camille was apt to think that
others, and especially the townsfolk of his birthplace,
did not fully recognise his true worth and capabilities.

Yet this letter which the young man received on the
eve of his arrest will prove to any unprejudiced reader
that the bond between the father and the son had not
been weakened by these little disagreements and mis-
understandings in the past. These are the words of
M. Desmoulins : —

" My dear son, I have lost the half of myself. Your mother
is no more. I have always hoped for her recovery, wrhich has
prevented me from telling you of her illness. She died to-day
at noon. She is worthy of all our regrets ; she loved you
tenderly. I embrace your wife, my dear daughter-in-law, very
affectionately and sorrowfully, and little Horace. I will write
more to-morrow. I am always your best friend,

" Desmoulins."

THE SOUTH WIND 279

There was no sleep for Camille that night. Never
the man to feel in moderation, or to take either sorrow
or happiness calmly, he sat for hour after hour, over-
whelmed with grief. We can fancy how Lucile laid
aside her own heartache to soothe her husband's
sorrow. Perhaps the remembrance of that very sorrow
was a comfort to them both during the days which
followed ; it must have drawn them to each other
very closely on this, the last night together.

At intervals during those restless, wakeful hours,
after Lucile had at last gone to lie down in the adjoin-
ing room, Camille corrected the proofs of the seventh
and last number of the " Vieux Cordelier " which
had been sent back from the printers that day. The
occupation served to distract his mind, to some extent,
from his sorrow ; the work was to be, as it were, his
last will and testament.

At about six o'clock in the morning there was an
unwonted disturbance in the usually quiet street.
There rose to Camille's ears the sound of the tramp of
heavy feet, and, a moment later, the clang of arms
grounded on the cobbles at a word of command.

He flung open the window, and leaning out, looked
down into the street. As he had expected, he saw
that a patrol of soldiers was drawn up before his
door. Camille was not unprepared for this ; he knew
only too well for what purpose they had come, and he
went unhesitatingly into the adjoining room, where his
wife lay asleep, with their little boy in his cradle at
her side.

For a moment the young man must have hesitated
as he looked down upon the peaceful face of the
sleeping girl. But this news of his must be told and
at once ; there was no time to think of how it might
be broken gently.

" They have come to arrest me," he said quietly, and
Lucile started up at the words, scarcely awake, hardly
understanding. ...

28o CAMILLE DESMOULINS

The scene which followed can be better imagined
than described. It was a scene which took place again
and again in those days — days which witnessed so often
the tearing apart of wives and husbands, of parents
and children. Yet each fresh actor in that tragedy
must have felt that he or she alone suffered its full
bitterness, and surely this was the thought of Camille
and Lucile as they clung together on that spring
morning.

Their married life had been so completely happy,
in spite of, nay, even because of, the trials and sorrows
which surrounded them. Was it to end like this, cut
short in a moment of time ?

Yet, mercifully, there can have been but little space
for tears. Lucile was obliged to think of other things,
to collect such clothes as Camille would need in
prison, where even the barest necessaries were not
provided. It must all be done, even though their
hearts were breaking, and we may be sure that Lucile
forgot nothing which could add to the comfort of the
man she loved. Camille hastily selected a couple of
books and thrust them into the valise. Both were in
English, and curiously indicative of his mood. They
were Hervey's " Meditations among the Tombs " and
Young's " Night Thoughts."

Then, for a moment, Camille knelt beside the cradle
of the sleeping child, that little Horace, who was never
really to know his young father. He kissed the baby
very gently, his unnatural calmness almost giving way
at the touch of the soft cheek, and turned to Lucile
for one last embrace . . . the very last.

Camille left his wife, now mercifully scarcely
conscious, and descended the stairs. He opened the
door himself, and his captors surrounded him and
bound his arms roughly, as though he had been a
common malefactor. Then, while the startled,
distressed neighbours stared from their windows and
doorways, they led him away.

THE SOUTH WIND 281

It was only a short distance from Camille's home to
his prison. He was taken to the Luxembourg, once a
palace, now a gaol. Here it is probable that he met
Danton in the common ante-chamber before they were
committed to separate cells. We know, at least, that
Danton saw and spoke with Lacroix and Philippeaux,
but there is no record of any conversation with
Camille.

The journalist was imprisoned in a cell which over-
looked the gardens of the Luxembourg ; we can
imagine that it was a sad joy to him to be able to see
those lawns and terraces once more from the window
of his prison.

Two days elapsed between the arrest of the Danton-
ists and their trial. The best account which we can
possibly obtain of Camille's thoughts and actions
during those forty-eight hours is to be found in the
two letters which he wrote to Lucile from the
Luxembourg. One cannot do better than give these
letters almost in their entirety. They show Camille
in his best and tenderest aspect ; they are amongst the
most pathetic love-letters in literature or history ;
it would be fair neither to the man nor to his genius
to omit or to mutilate them.

The first was written on the day of his arrest. It is
simply dated from the prison of the Luxembourg.

" My Lucile, my Vesta, my angel," Camille begins.
*' Destiny leads my eyes from my prison over that garden where
I passed eight years in following you. A glimpse of the
Luxembourg recalls to me a crowd of memories of my love.
I am alone, but never deserted by thought, by imagination,
almost by the sense of the bodily presence of you, of your
mother, of my little Horace.

" I have only written this first letter to demand some neces-
sary things. But I am going to pass all my time in prison in
writing to you ; because I have no need to take up my pen for
my defence. My justification is complete in my eight Republi-
can volumes. They are a good pillow, upon which my con-
science reposes, awaiting the tribunal and posterity.

282 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

" Oh, my good Lolotte, speak of other things ! I throw
myself upon my knees, I extend my arms to embrace you, I
find no more my poor Loulou. . . .

" Send me a water-glass, that one on which there is a ' C '
and a ' D ' ; our two names. Send me a pair of sheets, and a
book in duodecimo which I bought a few days ago at Charpen-
tier's, and in which there are blank pages, made expressly for
notes. This book treats of the immortality of the soul. I
have need to persuade myself that there is a God, more just
than men, and that I shall not fail to see thee again. Do not
be too much affected by my ideas, dearest, I do not yet despair
of men and of my liberation ; yes, my well-beloved, we shall
be able to meet yet once more in the garden of the Luxem-
bourg ! But send me that book. Farewell, Lucile ! Fare-
well, Horace ! I cannot embrace you, but, through the tears
which I shed, it seems to me that I hold you still against my
breast."

On the following day Camille wrote again to Lucile,
for the last time : —

" Kind slumber suspended my woes. One is free when one
sleeps : one has no more the sense of captivity : heaven has
had pity upon me. It was only for a moment that I saw you
in a dream, I embraced you turn by turn, thou and Horace,
but our little one had lost an eye through some affection
which had settled there, and grief at this accident awoke me.
I found myself in my cell ; it was just beginning to grow light.
Not being able to see thee any more and to hear thy replies,
because thou and thy mother spoke to me, I rose, that I might
at least speak to thee and write to thee. But, on opening my
windows, the thought of my loneliness, the frightful barriers,
the bolts which separate me from thee, have vanquished all
my firmness of soul. I burst into tears, or rather I sobbed,
crying in my tomb : ' Lucile, Lucile, where art thou ? '

" Yesterday, in the evening, I had a similar moment, and my
heart was equally moved when I perceived thy mother in the
gardens. An involuntary movement threw me on my knees
against the barriers ; I joined my hands as though imploring
her pity, she, who mourned, I am certain, upon thy breast.
I saw her sorrow yesterday by her handkerchief and by her
veil, which she lowered, not being able to bear this spectacle.

THE SOUTH WIND 283

When you both come, let her seat herself a little nearer with
thee, that I may see you better. It seems to me that there is
no danger. My spy-glass is not very good.

" But, above all, I implore thee send me the portrait ; let
thy painter have compassion on me, who only suffer for having
had too much compassion for others ; let him give thee two
sittings a day. In the horror of my prison, the day when I
receive thy portrait will be a festival, a day of merry-making
and of joy. In the meanwhile, send me a lock of hair, that I
may wear it against my heart. My dear Lucile ! Behold me
returned to the time of my first love for thee, when the mere
fact that anyone came from thee was enough to interest me
in him. To-day when the citizen who bore thee my letter had
returned : ' Well, you have seen her ? ' I asked, as I used to
say to the Abbe Laudreville, and I caught myself looking at
him as though some sign of thee hngered about his clothes,
upon his person. He has a charitable soul, since he has given
thee my letter without erasures. I shall see him when he
comes, twice a day, in the morning and the evening. This
messenger of my sorrows becomes as dear to me as would
formerly have been that of my pleasures.

" I have discovered a crack in the wall of my apartment ;
I applied my ear to it ; I heard a sigh : I ventured to whisper
a few words ; I was answered by the voice of a sick man who
suffered. He asked my name ; I told it to him. ' Oh, my
God ! ' he cried at that name, falling back upon his bed, from
which he had raised himself, and I recognised distinctly the
voice of Fabre d'Eglantine. ' Yes, I am Fabre,' he said to me.
' But thou here ! The counter-revolution is then accom-
plished ? '

" We did not dare, however, to speak together for fear that
hatred would grudge us this feeble consolation, and that, if
anyone should chance to overhear us, we should be separated
and more strictly confined ; because he has a chamber with a
fireplace, and mine would be sufiiciently comfortable if a cell
could ever be called so.

" But, dearest, thou canst not imagine what it is to be in
solitary confinement, without knowing for what reason,
without having been interrogated, without receiving a single
newspaper ! It is to live and to be dead at one and the same
time ; it is only to exist to feel that one is in a tomb. It is
said that innocence is calm, courageous. Ah, my dear Lucile,

284 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

my well-beloved ! Often then my innocence is feeble, as that
of a father, that of a son, that of a husband !

" If it was Pitt or Cobourg who treated me so severely ;
but my colleagues ! — but Robespierre, who has signed the
order for my imprisonment — but the Republic, after all that
I have done for her ! This is the reward which I receive for
so many virtues and sacrifices for her sake !

" When I entered here I saw Herault-Sechelles, Simon,
Ferroux, Chaumette, Antonelle ; they are less unhappy ;
not one of them is in solitary confinement.

" It is I who have called down upon myself for the past
five years so many hatreds and perils for the sake of the Re-
public, I, who have preserved my poverty in the midst of the
Revolution, I, who have only to ask pardon from thou alone
in all the world, my dear Lolotte, and to whom thou hast
accorded it, because thou knowest that my heart, in spite of
all its faults, is not unworthy of thee ; it is I, whom the men
who called themselves my friends, who called themselves
Republicans, throw into a cell, alone, as though I were a con-
spirator. Socrates drank hemlock ; but at least he saw in his
prison his friends and his wife. How much harder it is to be
separated from thee ! The greatest criminal would be too
severely punished if he were torn from a Lucile otherwise than
by death, which, at least, only makes one feel for a moment
the bitterness of such a separation ; but a guilty man would
not have been thy husband and thou hast only loved me
because I existed for nothing save the happiness of my fellow-
countrymen.

" They call for me. . . .

" At this moment the commissaries of the Government came
to interrogate me. Only this one question was put to me :
If I had conspired against the Republic. What mockery, and
how can they insult thus the most pure Republicanism ? I
see the fate which awaits me. Adieu.

" Thou seest in me an example of the barbarity and of the
ingratitude of men. My last moments shall not dishonour
thee. Thou seest that my fears were well-founded, that my
presentiments were always true. I have married a wife
celestial by her virtues ; I have been a good husband, a good
son ; I would have been also a good father. I carry with me
the esteem and the regrets of all true republicans, of all lovers
of virtue and of liberty. I die at thirty- four years of age, but

THE SOUTH WIND 285

it is a miracle that I have passed scatheless, during the last
five years, over so many of the precipices of the Revolution,
without falling, and that I still live ; I rest my head calmly
upon the pillow of my writings — too numerous — but which
all breathe the same love of mankind, the same desire to render
my fellow-countrymen happy and free, and which the axe of
tyrants cannot touch. I see plainly that power intoxicates all
men and that all say, like Dionysius of Syracuse : ' Tyranny is
a fine epitaph.'

" But console thyself, desolate widow. The epitaph of thy
poor Camille is more glorious : it is that of Brutus and of
Cato, the tyrannicides.

" Oh, my dear Lucile, I was born to make verses, to defend
the unhappy, to render thee happy, to compose with thy
mother and thy father and a few more after our own heart, an
Otaheite. I have dreamed of a Republic which all the world
would have adored. I could not have believed that men were
so fierce and so unjust. How could I think that some jests in
my writings against the colleagues who provoked me would
efface the remembrances of my services ? I cannot hide from
myself that I die the victim of those jests and of my friend-
ship for Danton. I thank my assassins that they let me die
with him and Philippeaux ; and since my colleagues have been
so cowardly as to abandon us and to lend ear to calumnies
which I do not know, but which I am advised are of the
gravest nature, I can say that we die the victims of our courage
in denouncing two traitors and of our love for truth. We
can bear with us this knowledge, that we perish the last of the
Republicans.

" Pardon me, my dearest, my true life, that I lost when we
were separated, if I occupy myself with my memories. I
ought rather to strive to make you forget. My Lucile, my
good Loulou ! Live for Horace, speak to him of me. Thovi
wilt say to him what he cannot yet understand, that I would
have loved him well. In spite of my sacrifice, I beheve that
there is a God. My blood will perhaps wash out my faults,
which are the common weakness of humanity, and God will
recompense me for the good which I have tried to do, for my
virtues, my love of Liberty, I shall see thee again some day,
oh, Lucile ! Is death so great a misfortune since it delivers
me, easily affected as I am, from the sight of so many crimes ?

" Farewell, my life, my soul, my earthly divinity. I leave

286 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

thee to the care of good friends — all those amongst men who
are virtuous and right- feeling, I perceive the shores of my
life receding before me. I see still Lucile. I see thee, my well-
beloved, my Lucile ! My bound hands embrace thee, and my
severed head rests still upon thee its dying eyes."

Lucile never received these last words of her hus-
band. The Dantonists were removed to the Concier-
gerie during the night of April 1st (12th Germinal),
and, on his arrival there, Camille gave the letter to
one Citizen Grosse-Beaurepaire, a prisoner like himself,
begging him, if possible, to deliver it. But this errand
could never be performed ; the message passed from
hand to hand, and remains to us now, after more than
a century, as Camille's best and most worthy testament,
a letter so brave in its pathos that it makes one's heart
ache to think that it never reached its destination,
never carried its message to Lucile's loving soul.

The greater part of those two days in prison must
have been spent by Camille in writing. The nervous,
highly-strung man was on the verge of a breakdown ;
he was ill in mind and body alike, unable to sleep,
unable to eat, tempted only by the soup which Lucile
made with her own hands and sent to the Luxembourg.
It was now that his profession came to his aid ; the
journalist's overwrought brain could find some relief,
some relaxation in setting down on paper the thoughts
which pressed upon him.

Besides the letters to Lucile, Camille wrote part of
what was intended to be the eighth number of the
" Vieux Cordelier." These few somewhat disjointed
passages remained unpublished, for obvious reasons,
until 1834, when they were included by M. Matton
in his edition of Camille's works. They treat almost
entirely of the danger of allowing one or more in-
dividuals to retain the dictatorship in the State for an
indefinite period, and there is no ambiguity, nor any
doubt as to whom Camille indicated in such words
as those which follow. They show plainly enough that

THE SOUTH WIND 287

arrest and imprisonment had not induced the journalist
to change his opinions.

" Freemen ! You desire to be free — be so then, in very
truth : do not content yourselves with the liberty of the
moment, seek also to secure your future enfranchisement.
You have cast forth your Tarquin, you have done more ;
his execution has affrighted all kings, those pretended masters
of the w^orld, who are only its tyrants and despoilers. But why
does the power of Brutus last more than a year ? . . . Why
is it to individuals that one owes one's preservation, instead
of to the Repubhc ? "

According to Jules Claretie, Camille wrote to
Robespierre from the Luxembourg, but the historian
gives no proof of this assertion, and it would seem to
be contradicted by the testimony of Charlotte Robes-
pierre, as contained in her " Memoirs " : —

" My brother loved Camille Desmoulins dearly," she says,
" they having studied together : and when he learned of his
arrest and incarceration at the Luxembourg, he went to the
prison that he might beg Camille to return to the true Revolu-
tionary principles which he had abandoned for an alliance
with the Royalists. Camille would not see him ; and my
brother, who would probably have assumed his defence, and
perhaps saved him, if he could have persuaded him to abjure
his political heresies, abandoned him to the terrible justice
of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Now Danton and Camille
were so intimately connected that he could not have saved the
one without the other ; if, therefore, Camille had not repulsed
him, when he held out his hand to him, Camille and Danton
would not have perished. . . . Desmoulins published his
' Vieux Cordelier,' in which he arraigned all the Revolutionists
and, in consequence, the Revolution. This was worse than a
great imprudence on his part — it was a crime. My elder
brother said sorrowfully to me on this subject, ' Camille is
ruining himself ' ; he took up his defence several times ; several
times also he tried to reclaim him, and spoke to him as a
brother, but in vain. . . . Despite his immense popularity
and extraordinary influence his words (in defence of Camille)
were received with murmurs. Then he saw that by trying to
save Camille he was working his own ruin."

288 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

It is in that last sentence that Charlotte Robespierre
gives the key to all her brother's conduct, as we judge
it. The remainder of this piece of special pleading is
full of obvious misstatements. It is idle to assert, for
instance, that Robespierre was not a party to the
publication of the " Vieux Cordelier." We have too
many irrefutable witnesses to prove that the paper was
indeed originally his own project, and that he passed
the proofs of, at least, the first three numbers.

It is perhaps natural that his sister should believe
that, had he met with encouragement, Maximilian
would have taken up the defence of Camille and
Danton, but the statement does not, unfortunately,
carry conviction. Neither does it seem probable that
Robespierre, as Charlotte infers, heard with consterna-
tion that Camille was imprisoned, since he himself had
signed the warrant for the arrest of the journalist
and his colleagues.

We know that Lucile tried to see her husband's one-
time friend and plead with him for Camille's life.
That interview she could not obtain, but the letter
which she wrote to Robespierre is still extant — a letter
almost incoherent, but with terrible truth in every
line of it.

" That hand which so often pressed yours, forsook the pen
before its time, because it could no longer hold it to trace your
praises. And you have sent him to death ! You have then
understood his silence ! "

The preliminary interrogations of the prisoners took
place at the Luxembourg on the morning of the I2th
Germinal (April 2nd), Camille being the first to be
questioned. On this occasion, as we have read in his
letter to Lucile, besides a few formal questions as to
his name, address and profession, the journalist was
asked only whether he " had conspired against the
French nation by wishing to restore the Monarchy,
by destroying the National Representation and the

THE SOUTH WIND 289

Republican Government ? " At this interrogation the
advocate, Chauveau de Lagarde, was nominated as
Camille's counsel.

In the meantime public opinion had been stunned by
the arrest of the Dantonists ; very few of their former
friends had been daring enough to plead for them in
public. At the meeting of the Convention on the
nth Germinal one man only rose to speak in their
favour. This was Legendre, the eloquent, stentorian-
voiced master-butcher, whom Camille had, on one
occasion, compared to Demosthenes.

" Citizens," he cried, " four members of this
assembly have been arrested to-day : I know that
Danton is one of them ; I am ignorant of the names of
the others ; but, whoever they may be, I demand that
they be heard at this bar. Citizens, I declare that I
believe Danton to be as innocent as I am myself ! "

But brave as were Legendre's words, his courage was
not of the lasting order. On being coldly reproved by
Robespierre, he hesitated, stammered, and finally
apologised for what he had said on his first generous
impulse. For Robespierre and his party did not intend
for one instant that Danton should be given the
opportunity to defend himself before the Convention,
which he had so often swayed by his words. It was
the Revolutionary Tribunal and no other which was
to judge and condemn the " Indulgents."

After Robespierre had scared Legendre into silence,
after he had spoken at length upon the cultivation
of the Republican virtues, upon the necessity that
the few should suffer for the good of the many,
Saint-Just rose to speak. He read a Report relating
to the crimes and treasons of the Dantonists with that
austere conviction which so often concealed the
falseness of his premises.

" The Republic is the people and not the renown
of a few men ! " he declared, and went on to denounce
each one of the accused by name. It is unnecessary to

290 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

examine this speech at length ; it was an astounding
tissue of lies and misrepresentations, woven with
subtle skill upon a foundation of half-truths. Philip-
peaux, Lacroix, Herault — Saint-Just attacked each in
turn. Camille he dismissed contemptuously as " a
dupe first, and afterwards an accomplice — wanting in
character " — yet he proceeded to calumniate him
most grossly. It was Danton, finally, whom the orator
attacked with the most bitter venom, accusing him of
all imaginable crimes, public and private.

Yet Saint-Just, by the sheer force of personality,
carried the cowed Assembly with him. At the close
of the Report, an almost unanimous decree of
accusation was passed against the Dantonists.

On the following day, April ist (i2th Germinal),
this accusation was read to the prisoners, previous
to their removal to the Conciergerie.

The accused men were brought together for the first
time on this occasion. Fabre d'Eglantine was sick
almost to death, Chabot in no better case, for he had
taken poison in his cell, Philippeaux, calm and com-
posed as ever, whilst Herault, his personal charm
unchanged to the last, embraced and thanked a faithful
servant, who was not permitted to accompany him
to the Conciergerie.

Danton heard the iniquitous report with unmoved
contempt, but Camille was furious at the calumnies
brought against him by Saint-Just. He raged and
stormed until rebuked by Danton, after which he
managed to compose himself. We are told that he
murmured, with quivering lips : " I go then to the
scaffold, because I have shed tears at the fate of so
many unhappy people. My only regret, in dying, is
that I have not been able to serve them better."

The prisoners were transferred to the Conciergerie,
that ante-chamber to the Revolutionary Tribunal,
where they were confined together in the same cell
which the Girondins had occupied six months before.

THE SOUTH WIND 291

It was on their arrival here that Danton used the words
which have since become famous.

" It was on such a day that I instituted the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal. I ask pardon for it from God and
man ! My aim was to prevent fresh September
massacres, not to establish a scourge for humanity."
Then, speaking of Robespierre and his colleagues, he
said bitterly : " These Cains know nothing of govern-
ment. I leave everything in a frightful muddle."
And he added : " It were better to be a poor fisherman
than to rule men."

During this short time in the Conciergerie, Camille
composed the " Notes upon the Report of Saint-Just,"
which were to be his last written words. There is
bitter anger in this defence, yet, beneath it all, we can
plainly read his despair.

" If I could only print in my turn," he begins. ..." If
they would leave me only two days in which to compose
No. 7, how I would confound M. le Chevalier Saint-
Just ! . . . But Saint-Just writes at his leisure, in his bath, in
his dressing-room ; he meditates on my assassination for
fifteen days ; and I, I have nowhere even to place my writing-
case ; I have only a few hours left in which to defend my life.
. . . But there is a Providence, a Providence for Patriots, and
already I can die contented : the Republic is saved. ... It is
proved by many decisive facts that those who accuse us are
themselves the conspirators.

" I come to that which concerns me personally in this
Report. There has been no such atrocious example of calumny
as this piece of work within the memory of man. And in the
first place there is no one in the Convention who does not
know that M. the heretofore Chevalier Saint-Just has sworn
implacable hatred against me, because of a light pleasantry
which I permitted myself five months ago in one of my num-
bers. ... I put Saint- Just into a jesting newspaper paragraph,
and, in return, he puts me into a murderous report, where,
with regard to me, there is not one word of truth."

In this, and all the rest of Camille's defence, eloquent
and impassioned as it is, we feel that the writer did not

292 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

hope for acquittal, that he knew himself and his
colleagues to be already judged and condemned,
since they had fallen into the hands of these, their
enemies.

Yet their condemnation was to be no easy task.
Fouquier-Tinville was busy preparing the case against
the Dantonists, and perhaps it is scarcely fair to blame
the astute Public Prosecutor for the futility of much
of his evidence. The work was almost beyond his
power. It was no light matter to be called upon to
bring forward irrefragable proofs that Danton, Camille
Desmoulins, Herault, Westermann — the heroes of the
Bastille and of August loth — were Royalists, con-
spirators and traitors to the Republic.

V

THE Dantonists were brought before the
Revolutionary Tribunal, in the Salle de
Liberte of the Palais de Justice, on April
2nd (13th Germinal), at eleven o'clock in
the morning. The accused were sixteen in number,
including the Alsatian, General Westermann, who had
only been arrested that same day.

There was distinct method in the apparently pro-
miscuous way in which the prisoners were herded
together. Firstly, there was the party of the " In-
dulgents," Danton, Camille, Philippeaux, Herault,
Lacroix and Westermann, and, included in the same
indictment with them, were a number of men accused
of bribery, forgery and other criminal offences against
the Government. These were Fabre d'Eglantine,
Delaunay, Chabot, the two Freys, Bazire, Despagnac,
Lhuillier, Guzman and Diederichsen.

There is no doubt that this measure, by which at
least three distinct groups of persons, having absolutely
no connection with each other, were committed for
trial together, was adopted deliberately by the
Revolutionary Tribunal, acting on the authority of the
Committees of Government. Here is the affirmation
of Nicolas-Joseph Paris (nicknamed Fabricius), regis-
trar to the Tribunal, given in his evidence at the trial
of Fouquier-Tinville.

" This refinement of perfidy," he says, " was often made use
of by the Committees and oftener by Fouquier, confounding
men of the highest probity, the most intrepid defenders of
our liberty, with mean scoundrels and declared enemies of the
Revolution."

293

294 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Herman was the President of the Tribunal, of which
the other members were Masson-Denizot, Foucault
and Bra vet. Fouquier-Tinville held, of course, the
position of Public Prosecutor, and his deputy was
Fleuriot-Lescot. The jurors were most carefully
selected by Fouquier himself. Paris tells us that the
Public Prosecutor asked for the jury-list and, when it
was brought to him, after making a cross beside several
names, he marked another with the letter " F." On
Paris enquiring what this meant, Fouquier answered :
" It signifies ' faible.' He is fond of reasoning, and
we don't want people who reason, we want this
business done with." Then, staring at the registrar
fixedly, the Public Prosecutor added : " Moreover,
it is what the Committee of Public Safety wills."

These well-chosen jurymen were Trinchard, Leroy
(nicknamed Dix-Aout), Lumiere, Souberbielle, Des-
boisseaux and Renaudin. The last-named was chal-
lenged by Camille at the opening of the trial, and
apparently on good grounds, but the Tribunal dis-
regarded his appeal.

In a volume entitled " Anecdotes inedites de la fin
du dix-huitieme siecle," there is a curious story relating
to one of the jurors at the trial of the Dantonists,
whose name is not given. The author of the book tells
us that this juryman was an intimate friend of
Camille's, and that, whilst he was in the court, the
journalist never took his eyes from his face ; he seemed
to say : " Would you dare condemn me ? "

Against his heart and his conscience the juror voted
for the death of Camille and his colleagues, but, not
long after, he was overcome by remorse at what he had
done. The health of the unfortunate man com-
pletely broke down : he brooded incessantly over the
terrible result of his action, and he is reported to have
said despairingly to a friend, who enquired of him the
reason of his misery : " I have assassinated my friend,
and I cannot live ; I am torn by remorse. Camille is

THE SOUTH WIND 295

perpetually before my eyes ; even now, while I am
speaking to you, he is there — I see him, I hear him
... he reproaches me with my barbarity, and yet I
live ! "

Our best account of the process of the Dantonists
is contained in the vivid, hasty notes of Topino-
Lebrun, the artist. He had been nominated on the
jury, but was not called upon to serve. He remained
in the court, however, and wrote down his impressions
of the proceedings as they passed.

One by one the prisoners made answer to Herman's
formal interrogations, each according to his nature.

Danton's reply thunders down to us, typical alike
of the man and the epoch.

" My name is Georges-Jacques Danton, formerly a
lawyer, afterwards a Revolutionist and representative
of the people. My dwelling will soon be in nothing-
ness, after that, in the Pantheon of history."

Camille's answer is even better known ; we have
discussed it more fully in an earlier chapter.

" I am thirty-three, the age of the sansculotte
Jesus, when he died ; a critical age for every patriot."

Herault replied with the easy lightness which he
preserved throughout : " I am called Marie-Jean —
hardly a striking name, even among the Saints. I sat
in this hall and was detested by Parliamenteers."

Westermann, after protesting against this arraign-
ment, since he did not even know what was his indict-
ment, made answer in a soldierly fashion, worthy of
his high military reputation.

" I am from Strasburg, a soldier from my infancy.
I shall demand to be shown naked to the people that
they may see me. I have seven wounds, all in front : I
have received only one behind — my act of accusation."

Danton appealed in the beginning against the in-
justice which endeavoured to implicate himself and
his friends with the conspiracies of perjurers and
forgers, but his protest was disregarded.

296 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

This first day of the trial was mainly occupied in the
examination of Chabot, Bazire, the Freys and De-
launay, accused of financial offences. Herman and his
colleagues were apprehensive and nervous ; very disin-
clinedtocometothe real business inhand. They dreaded,
and with reason, the effect which Danton's eloquence
might have upon the crowds who thronged the hall.

Yet, in spite of all their efforts, he succeeded in
obtaining a hearing late in the day. He rose to demand
that a Committee, composed of members of the Con-
vention, should be nominated to hear the protests
which he, Camille and Philippeaux wished to make
against the dictatorial methods of the Committee of
Public Safety. The Tribunal was not by any means
prepared to accede to this request ; nevertheless no
valid reasons could be given for refusal, and to evade
the necessity for answering decisively, Herman hastily
broke up the sitting for that day.

He then immediately went with Fouquier to take
counsel V\^ith the Committee of Public Safety as to
whether it was necessary to subpoena the witnesses
of the accused ; the only members present were Saint-
Just and Billaud-Varennes. It was decided that no
answer should be given to the demands of the
prisoners, but that, by some means or other, the
sittings must be spun out until the three days had
elapsed, after which, according to the rules of the
Tribunal, the jurors might declare themselves suffi-
ciently instructed to give a verdict without further
evidence.

On this second day, as Paris tells us, the hearing
began very late. There had been many strange, heroic,
amazing trials before the Tribunal, but never one like
this. It was not possible to postpone Danton's
examination any longer ; he rose now to speak, to
justify himself before the people.

And the people were there, to hear his defence.
The Court was crowded to overflowing, a dense throng

THE SOUTH WIND 297

filled the Cour des Pas Perdus, and the Cour du
Harlay. It extended outside, all around the walls
of the Palais de Justice, and beyond along the Quais,
crowding the Place Dauphine and reaching from thence
to the Pont Neuf and the Mint.

Each incident within the hall was repeated and
repeated again from mouth to mouth in this packed,
agitated mob, uneasy, they scarcely knew why, vaguely
terrified at the sense of something portentous which,
it seemed to them, was about to come to pass. Almost
incredible as it may appear, we have it on the authority
of many witnesses that Danton's great voice could be
heard, through the open windows of the Court, even
as far as the opposite bank of the Seine, when he raised
it now and again in protest or indignation.

And this was the voice which had so often called
these self-same people to arms, it was the voice which
had mustered the levies to destroy the Army of the
Coalition, which had sounded like a tocsin on August
icth, that terrible day of vengeance. This voice had
had the power to move the Parisian mob again and
again ... it had the power to move it still. Back-
wards and forwards the crowd swayed, excited almost
unbearably, ready for almost anything. It needed but
a word to make them rise and carry the prisoners in
triumph from the court — and that word might come
at any moment.

It is Danton's personality which dominates the
whole of the proceedings henceforth. There is a
rough but lifelike engraving which represents the
great Tribune as he appeared on this day. He stands
in the dock, towering above his companions, like a
lion at bay — the hackneyed metaphor rises involun-
tarily to one's lips in speaking of Danton — with head
thrown back and collar open at the throat, his hair
in wild disorder, and on his lips a smile of fierce disdain.
Never did a man defend his life in such a fashion.
With even more than his old energy and audacity of

298 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

phrase and gesture he alternately browbeat and
mocked at his accusers, crushing them beneath the
weight of his just anger and his terrible scorn.

They accused him of having been bought by the
Court ; he interrupted their words with a veritable
shout of indignation :

" I sold ? A man of my stamp is priceless ! . . .
Let him who accuses me to the Convention produce
the proofs, the semi-proofs, the faintest signs of my
venality ! . . . I have laboured too much ; I am sick
of life : it is a burden to me."

In violent, trenchant words he held up to scorn the
insinuations brought against him of cowardice upon
the day of August loth and contemptuously rebutted
the accusation that he was the paid supporter of
Mirabeau — D'Orleans — Dumouriez — each and all of
those who had played for supremacy in the Republic
and lost. He boasted — yet it was no boast but the
simple truth — that he would willingly embrace his
enemy for the sake of his country, for which he would
give his body to be devoured.

There is insight in the words in which Danton
summed up certain of his contemporaries.

" Marat had a fiery nature," he said. " Robespierre
is tenacious and firm — and I — I was useful after my
own fashion."

Again and again Herman interrupted this torrent
of words.

" Danton," he said, " audacity is no proof of
innocence. Your defence should be made in a more
orderly manner."

Then, as the accused man persisted in his loud
justification, and the galleries buzzed with sympathy
and half-suppressed applause, the President grew
more and more agitated and indignant.

" Do you not hear my bell ? " he cried.

" A man defending his life despises your bell, and
cries aloud," Danton shouted back defiantly.

THE SOUTH WIND 299

Danton had spoken no mere empty words at the
beginning o£ his examination.

" Provided that we are allowed to speak and to
speak freely," he had said, " I am sure to confound
my accusers, and if the French people are what they
ought to be, I shall be obliged to ask for pardon for
the rascals."

Camille, according to Topino-Lebrun, echoed these
words.

" Ah, we shall be allowed to speak ! " he cried.
" That is all we ask," and the juror adds that the
accused deputies showed signs of great and heartfelt

joy-
It was small wonder that Herman trembled, that

Fouquier-Tinville trembled, that the whole Tribunal

dreaded what would be the outcome of all this. The

" Indulgents " might yet escape condemnation —

unless Danton could be silenced.

No easy task this. Louder and louder rose his voice,
as he demanded that Billaud-Varennes and certain
others should be called as witnesses. The Tribunal
refused this, which every accused man might be
thought to have the right to demand, and there is real
and unaffected dignity in Danton's answer, choking
with rage as he was.

" I am refused witnesses ; very well, I will not
defend myself any more, I have also to apologise for
any unnecessary warmth I may have shown ; it is my
disposition."

Herman saw his opportunity and seized it. Pro-
testing hypocritically that Danton appeared to be
exhausted, he declared that the remainder of his
defence must be postponed until the following day, and
incontinently broke up the sitting.

Throughout this day certain members of the
Committee of General Security, Amar, Vouland and
Vadier, had listened to all the proceedings from a
place of concealment in an adjoining room. They

300 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

shared the fears of the judges as to the outcome of the
trial, and were equally determined that Danton and
his colleagues must somehow be silenced.

On the following day (the 15 th Germinal) it was
again very late before the court was convoked.
Although Danton demanded to be heard again at once,
Herman passed on to the examination of certain of the
other prisoners. After Herault came the turn of
Camille, and we can gather plainly enough the course
which his cross-examination took from his answers
as reported in Topino-Lebrun's notes, scrappy and
disjointed as they are.

" At the time of my dispute with Saint-Just the latter said
that he would kill me. ... I denounced Dumouriez before
Marat. D'Orleans first. I commenced the Revolution ; my
death will end it. . . . Marat was deceived in Proly. . . .
What man is there who has not had his Dillon ? . . . Since
the Fourth Number I have written only to retract. ... I
have been encouraged, written to. . . . Have unmasked the
Hubert faction. It is a good thing that someone did it."

Furthermore certain passages from the " Vieux
Cordelier " were read, in which Camille (and with
reason) was accused of having scoffed at the Conven-
tion and the Committees. It does not appear that
Chauveau de Lagarde, who had been appointed the
journalist's counsel, spoke on his behalf, but Camille,
as we have seen, had prepared a written defence
against the accusations in Saint-Just's report, which,
however, he was to be given no opportunity to read.

Herman then proceeded with the examination of
Lacroix, but the accused man obstinately demanded
that certain witnesses should be called in his defence.

Fouquier-Tinville replied that he could not summon
them, since they were members of the Convention,
but this answer did not satisfy any of the prisoners.
They protested indignantly against the injustice
of this treatment, and a tumult arose in the court.
The President tried vainly to interrogate Westermann,

THE SOUTH WIND 301

the Freys and Guzman ; he was constantly in-
terrupted, especially by Danton, who never ceased to
demand that their witnesses should be called. At
last Fouquier rose to make an apparently reasonable
proposal.

" It is time to put a stop to this brawl," he said.
" It is a scandal both to the Tribunal and to those who
hear you. I will write to the Convention and ask what
its wishes are ; they will be exactly carried out."

This was more or less what the accused men desired ;
they declared themselves satisfied, and the examination
proceeded more quietly.

Fouquier indeed immediately despatched a letter,
but not, as he had promised, to the Convention. He
wrote to the Committee o£ Public Safety, employing
exaggerated and unjustifiable language to gain his
purpose.

" A terrible tumult has been raging ever since the sitting
began," he wrote. " The maddened prisoners claim the hear-
ing of their witnesses. . . . They appeal to the pubhc from
the refusal which they pretend to have met with, in spite of
the firmness of the President and of the entire Tribunal ;
their protestations disturb the sitting, and they declare loudly
that they will not be silent until their witnesses are heard.
. . . We request you to trace our line of conduct for us
definitely, as the judiciary order furnishes us with no means
whatever for justifying this refusal. . , , We foresee that the
only way to make them keep silence would be by a decree."

It will be seen that even Fouquier does not pretend
that the act which he contemplated was lawful — it
was merely expedient.

On receipt of this letter from the Public Prosecutor,
the members of the Committee were undecided as to
their course of action : Saint-Just alone persisted that
it was necessary to refuse the demands of the accused
at all costs. Yet some pretext was necessary ; some
means must be found of putting the prisoners to
silence. It was not until the end of the third day

302 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

that the jurors could declare themselves satisfied, and,
in the meantime, who knew what might happen, if
Danton was permitted to speak freely. A pretext
was ready to the hand of the Committee, and, infamous
as it was, the members did not hesitate to avail them-
selves of it.

Arthur Dillon, who played the part of an unwilling
evil genius in the lives of Camille and his wife, was
at this time a prisoner in the Luxembourg, having
been rearrested shortly before this date. It is very
probable that Lucile wrote to the General after
Camille's arrest ; he owed a great deal to her husband's
efforts and might be expected to be ready to serve
him by every means in his power. It is quite likely,
moreover, that Dillon formed a plan to incite the
populace to attack the Palais de Justice and release
the prisoners, and, since he had plenty of money in
his possession, he may have decided to distribute it
judiciously to serve his purpose.

Whatever his plans may or may not have been, it is
said that the ex-general, under the influence of drink,
talked freely and unwisely to one Laflotte, a fellow-
prisoner, who had formerly been ambassador to
Florence. This man resolved to betray Dillon, in
the hope of receiving his own freedom as a reward,
and he confided his intention to Captain Amans, one
of those infamous prison spies or " moutons " who
owed their existence to the system of terror.

Laflotte and Amans wrote to the Committee of
Public Safety on April 2nd and were conducted to
the Tuileries and cross-examined on the subject.
They exaggerated and misrepresented the affair, so as
to make it appear as an organised prison conspiracy.
Laflotte stated that Dillon had told him that it was
time for good Republicans to make a stand against idle
oppressors, that, if Danton was able to hold his own
at the Tribunal, his condemnation was by no means
assured, and that a large sum of money had been

THE SOUTH WIND 303

remitted to Lucile Desmoulins, in order that she might
have the means of stirring up the people to revolt.

At her trial Lucile expressly denied that she had
received any money from Dillon. Moreover, it is
inconceivable that she was engaged in any organised
conspiracy at this time. Her one idea was how she
might save Camille. She had wandered round the
Luxembourg for hour after hour, in the hope of seeing
him, she had written to, and sought interviews with,
those in authority, she had snatched at any and every
means by which she might obtain her husband's
release, but very certainly she had no room in her
thoughts for these schemes of " overturning the
Republic," " of setting the son of Louis XVI upon
the throne," whereof she was accused.

It mattered very little to Saint-Just and his col-
leagues whether the information which they had
received was true or false. The hint of a " prison
conspiracy " was always sufficient to scare the Conven-
tion into submission, moreover it was the one thing
calculated to thoroughly alarm the mob.

Accordingly on the afternoon of this same day of
15th Germinal, Saint -Just and Billaud - Varennes
hastened to the Convention, and the former demanded
an immediate hearing, in order that he might make a
report in the names of the two Government Com-
mittees.

" The Public Prosecutor at the Revolutionary Tribunal,"
so this document began, " has informed us that the revolt
of the culprits has caused the proceedings of justice to be
suspended until the National Convention shall have deliber-
ated."

The whole report did great credit to the ingenuity
of Saint-Just. Even the natural anger of the accused
men was made to appear unwarrantable and even
criminal. Could sophistry go further than in this
phrase ?

304 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

" What innocent man ever rebelled against the
laws ? We want no other proofs of their criminal
attempts than this audacity."

Saint-Just then went on to speak of the supposed
prison conspiracy.

" Dillon, who ordered his army to march upon
Paris, has declared that the wife of Desmoulins has
received money in order to promote a rising for the
assassination of patriots, and of the Revolutionary
Tribunal."

Finally the report practically demanded that the
Convention should adopt the accompanying decree,
which ran as follows : —

" The National Convention orders that the Revolutionary
Tribunal shall proceed with the instruction relating to the
conspiracy of Lacroix, Danton, Chabot and others. The
President shall make use of every means which the law permits
to cause his authority and that of the Revolutionary Tribunal
to be respected, and to repress every attempt on the part of
the accused to trouble public tranquillity and to hinder the
course of justice.

" It is decreed that all persons accused of conspiracy who
shall resist or insult the national justice shall be outlawed and
receive judgment on the spot."

This decree was adopted by the whole Convention
unanimously, so completely were even the friends of
Danton cowed into submission at this moment.
Vouland and Amar were immediately despatched
with it to the Palais de Justice.

Meanwhile things had not gone well at the Tribunal,
as far as Fouquier and his associates were concerned.
Danton had resumed his defence, and again his voice
and words stirred the emotions of the crowd. Wester-
mann also had made an impression on the people,
justifying himself quietly and simply, like the valiant
soldier that he was.

It was at this vital moment that the emissaries of

THE SOUTH WIND 305

the Committee of General Security arrived with the
decree. Paris has graphically described the scene.

" They were pale," he says. " Anger and terror were painted
on their countenances, so much did they fear that their
victims would escape death. . . . Vouland said : ' We have
them, the scoundrels ; they were conspiring at the Luxem-
bourg.' They sent for Fouquier, who was in the court. He
appeared at once. On seeing him, Amar said : ' Here is what
you want.' It was the decree of outlawry. Vouland said :
' Here is something to put you at ease.' Fouquier replied,
with a smile : ' We wanted it badly enough.' He re-entered
the court with an air of satisfaction, and read aloud the decree."

One can faintly imagine the horror and indignation
of the prisoners on hearing this infamous proclama-
tion. Danton sprang to his feet.

" I take my h^earers to witness," he cried, " that
we have not insulted the Tribunal ! "

There was a murmur of assent from many of those
present, and Herman dreaded that some demonstration
might be made in favour of the prisoners. Confident
in the support of the Convention, he ordered that the
accused men were to be at once removed from the
court, such an order literally amounting to outlawry.
It was in vain that the prisoners vehemently protested.

" It is infamous ! " cried Lacroix. " We are judged
without being heard."

" No documents have been produced against us,"
shouted Danton. " Neither have any witnesses been
called."

The members of the Committee of General Security
who had brought the decree to the Tribunal now
entered the hall, their whole bearing full of ill-
concealed triumph. Danton's eyes fell upon them,
and he pointed them out to his companions, exclaiming
with bitter scorn :

" Look at those cowardly assassins ; they will hunt
us to death ! "

Unhappy Camille had an even more terrible cause
u

3o6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

for distress than his own imminent death. He had
Hstened with horror as Fouquier read Saint-Just's
iniquitous decree, had heard, with almost incredulous
agony, that Lucile was to be involved in his own fall.

" The wretches — the infamous wretches ! " he
groaned. " Not content with killing me, they will
murder my wife also ! "

Camille's self-possession gave way entirely under
this new blow. In a fury of anger he tore up his now
useless defence and flung the fragments into Fouquier's
face. When the guards came to remove the prisoners
from the court, he clung to his seat and refused to
leave the dock with his companions. It became
necessary at last for three men to drag him from his
place and practically to carry him from the hall.

The prisoners were taken back to the Conciergerie
and confined in separate cells. The crowds in the
hall of the Tribunal and in the surrounding streets
dispersed moodily. Notwithstanding the arbitrary
methods of the Committees, notwithstanding the
decree of the Convention, it was by no means certain
that these measures would be successful. It was whis-
pered that the jury would not agree — that the majority
of them would be in favour of acquittal.

But Fouquier, Herman and their colleagues were
not to be baulked when their victory was so nearly
won. Next morning, the i6th Germinal, the members
of the Committee of General Security went to the
Palais de Justicd, as Paris tells us, before nine o'clock
and held a consultation in the Public Prosecutor's
private room. Herman and Fouquier then went to the
jury-room, and we are told, again on the authority of
Paris, that the two men deliberately set themselves to
persuade and threaten the jurors into declaring that
they were satisfied with the evidence.

Their task was accomplished before the court was
declared open. Lhuillier alone of all the prisoners
was acquitted. The rest were to die that same day.

THE SOUTH WIND 307

The accused men were not summoned again before
the Tribunal : Herman and Fouquier doubted,
reasonably enough, their ability to control Danton ;
they feared the effect of his wrath and indignation.
Accordingly it had been decreed that in consequence
of the " indecorum, the sneers and the blasphemies
of the accused in the presence of the Tribunal, the
questions be submitted to the jury and the intervening
judgment pronounced in the absence of the accused."

Judgment was already pronounced. Even before
the jury had given their verdict the death-sentence
had been virtually passed and the compositors were
setting it up in type, in order that it might be published
immediately throughout Paris.

The Dantonists themselves knew well what that in-
evitable judgment would be. They awaited it on the
whole calmly.

One by one they were taken to the waiting-room of
the Conciergerie to hear their sentences of death read
to them by the clerk, Ducray. All of them refused to
listen to that iniquitous pronouncement of judicial
murder.

" It is useless," said Danton sternly. " You may as
well take us at once to the guillotine. I will not listen to
your judgment. We are assassinated ; that is enough."

Camille, crouched in a corner of his cell, sat with his
face buried in his arms, his body shaken by sobs.
From time to time broken sentences escaped him :
" Lucile . . . my little Horace. . . . Oh, my beloved !
. . . What will become of them ? "

It must be remembered, before one calls him weak
or unmanly, what poignant cause Camille had for
grief — nay, almost for despair. It was not only the
thought of his own death which he must needs face —
though that, to a man as keenly alive as Camille,
can be no light matter — but he knew also only too
well, that Lucile, his beloved Lucile, stood in the
same peril as himself.

3o8 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

One must not forget, moreover, in judging Camille,
that almost from the first he had reaHsed to what
goal his campaign of clemency would lead — and,
knowing it, had yet persisted to the end.

Camille was no stoic ; he was only a helpless man,
broken down in mind and body by all that he had
passed through, a husband who saw his wife about to
die for his sake, a father who pictured his baby son
left desolate. This, then, was the end of it all. Never
again would he feel the fierce exultation of popular
triumph, the intense pleasure of the writer in fashion-
ing the perfect phrase ; above all, never more would
he know the closer and more intimate joys of his home
life — never sit with Lucile, they two alone together
in the flickering firelight. . . . Can we wonder if
Camille wept ? — Heaven knows he had paid dearly
enough for the right to shed those tears.

It was but a short space in those days which elapsed
between the passing of the sentence and its fulfilment.
Short enough — yet the hours of that spring day must
have seemed long to those who awaited their death.

It was late in the afternoon when Sanson and his
assistants came to make the last preparations. Poor
Camille resisted impotently even now ; before they
could bind his arms and cut away his hair and the
collar of his shirt, the executioners were obliged
to tie him to a chair. He only calmed himself when
Danton, at his request, placed in his pinioned hands a
locket which contained a tress of Lucile's hair.

At five o'clock two tumbrils, drawn by huge grey
Normandy horses, waited before the Conciergerie.
A vast crowd were assembled around the gates of the
prison to see the Dantonists pass out to their death.
One by one the condemned men entered the carts and
seated themselves upon the rough benches fixed against
the sides. All of them were bareheaded and in their
shirt-sleeves, with their arms firmly bound.

Danton was the last to ascend the leading tumbril,

THE SOUTH WIND 309

following immediately after Camille. Fabre d'Eglan-
tine was so weak that he could scarcely sit upright, and
Danton took the place next to him, so that his broad
chest served as a support for the sick man, and pre-
vented him from falling from his seat when the
jolting of the carts over the rough cobbles of the Rue
Saint-Honore threw the prisoners against each other.
On the other side was Camille, trembling with his
efforts to keep calm. His white, drawn face and the
scared, piteous look in his eyes arrested the attention
of many onlookers.

And between the two sat Danton, steady as a rock,
and as rugged and unmoved. Those broad shoulders
of his which had borne the weight of so many burdens
now formed a physical support for his weaker com-
panions, even as his strong courage nerved them
morally.

In the same tumbril was Herault, he who had been
called the handsomest man in France, aristocratic
Herault de Sechelles, once a courtier and the friend
of kings and queens. It might have been to some
great Court function that they led Herault to-day, if
one had judged only by his unmoved face and gallant
bearing. Philippeaux, who, like Camille, was leaving
a devoted wife and a young child, bore himself as a
brave and honest man, while Westermann, in the
second tumbril, faced death like a soldier, firm-lipped,
with a stern, set face.

The crowd surrounding the death-carts was
enormous ; it surged against them in great waves,
impeding their progress and forcing the horses, led
by the executioner's assistants, to go with extreme
slowness. And the vast mob was not silent ; it had
neither respect nor pity for these men who were so
soon to die. Probably many amongst the crowd were
hired by the authorities to lead, as it were, the chorus
of imprecation and abuse. The Committees feared
the fickleness of the mob ; they dreaded that some

310 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

voice might be raised in pity, to recall the services of
these one-time leaders, and every precaution was
taken to stifle such a cry before it could make itself
heard.

Fierce curses, unspeakable insults rose from that
escort of almost dehumanised men and women.
Danton eyed them with unspeakable scorn ; he would
not deign to appeal to those blind fools to spare his
life, since gratitude was dead in them. Herault,
Lacroix and Philippeaux seemed oblivious to all that
passed around them ; Fabre was in a state of semi-
stupor.

But Camille — poor Camille ! He remembered too
well the day when this same Parisian crowd, perchance
these very men and women, had carried him shoulder-
high from the Palais Royal, proclaiming him as their
saviour, the leader of the Revolution.

The change in them seemed to him incredible : he
could not, even now, believe that men could be so
cruel — so oblivious of past services. Surely — surely
they would not let him die. . . .

" You are deceived, citizens," he cried, his voice
strained and hoarse. " Citizens ! it is your preservers
who are being sacrificed. It was I — I, who on July 1 2th
called you first to arms ! I first proclaimed liberty.
. . . My sole crime has been pity. . ."

Then, as the mob only answered him with jeers and
derision, his appeals changed to threats — he hurled
back insults, he struggled impotently against his
bonds, struggled so that his thin shirt was torn to
shreds, exposing his chest and shoulders. It was a
piteous sight — yet it moved the crowd to nothing
save mocking laughter.

Then Danton spoke with rough kindliness.

" Be quiet ! " he said to the desperate, almost
exhausted man at his side. " Be quiet then ; leave
this vile rabble alone."

It would seem that the words of the greater man

THE SOUTH WIND 311

partially calmed Camille ; he grew quieter as the
tumbrils passed slowly and yet more slowly through the
thickening throng.

Only once again he broke out. In the Rue Saint-
Honore they passed a silent, shuttered house : it was
the house of Duplay, and within Robespierre sat in
his darkened room, pale and silent, whilst the man
who had been his boyhood's friend passed by to his
death.

And at sight of those closed, dumb windows
Camille drew himself upright in the tumbril — shouted
at the top of his hoarse, weak voice, so that his words
must surely have reached Robespierre's ears.

" My assassins will not long survive me ! " he
cried.

Slowly the tumbrils entered the Place de la Revolu-
tion. Over the heads of the crowd, close-packed in
the great square, the condemned men could see the
instrument of their death reared on the spot where the
obelisk now stands. Above it rose an enormous plaster
statue of Liberty, silhouetted against the rose-flushed
sky, and the rays of the setting sun tinged the por-
tentous image and the guillotine itself with stains like
blood.

The carts reached the foot of the scaffold ; the
prisoners descended from them one by one, Herault
was the first of the " Indulgents " to die. He bent to
kiss Danton as he passed him, but the executioners
interposed.

" Fools," said Danton, with bitter and terrible
mockery. " You cannot prevent our heads from
meeting later in the basket."

Lacroix next ascended the scaffold, and then
Camille was summoned.

At this last supreme moment, his self-control
returned ; he faced death steadily. He ascended the
ladder with a firm step, his dark eyes fixed on the great
statue, towering above him.

312 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

" So the first apostle of liberty falls . . ." he mur-
mured.

Sanson approached to bind him to the plank, and
Camille showed him the lock of Lucile's hair which
was still dasped in his hand.

" Send this to her mother . . ." he said, and then,
as they pushed him under the knife, with his last
breath came the broken words : " Oh, my poor
wife. . . ."

Last of them all died Danton. He also thought of
his wife, and, at the thought, even his iron self-control
gave way.

" My beloved, I shall never see thee again," he
muttered, under his breath, and then, fighting back
his grief : " Come, come, Danton, no weakness ! " he
said aloud.

Once again, and for the last time, that mighty
voice rang out, over the heads of the awed and
trembling crowd.

" Show my head to the people ! " he commanded
Sanson. " It is good to look at ; they do not see the
like every day."

" My poor wife. . . ." Lucile would not have
echoed those words of Camille's. We have seen how
one of these faithful lovers died, and the story is sad
enough. Now, we must turn to watch the triumphant
passing of Lucile Desmoulins.

Alexandre de Laflotte and Captain Amans, the
sheep of the prisons, had filled in the outlines of an
almost imaginary plot in the Luxembourg, until it
grew well defined, and in the end became formidable
enough to bring about the condemnation and death
of the Dantonists.

But their work was not yet at an end.

On the 15th Germinal, the eve of Camille's death,
the warrant was issued for Lucile's arrest. They
did not leave the girl to mourn her husband even upon

THE SOUTH WIND 313

the day of his execution ; she was carried to the
prison of Saint-Pelagie, dragged from her parents and
her Httle boy, the only hving creatures who could have
consoled her.

Yet we are told that Lucile went willingly and even
gladly ; she seemed assured that it was only by this
pathway that she could reach Camille's side once more.

Lucile was transferred to the Conciergerie on the
1 8th Germinal. She met there those who were to
be her companions in death — Arthur Dillon, Gobel,
the ex-bishop, Chaumette, the Grammonts, father and
son, Hebert's widow — in all eighteen men and women.
It was a strange fate which decreed that Lucile
Desmoulins and the wife of Hebert should die together.
All the bitter enmities of their husbands were for-
gotten now, and we read that the two women sat
together for hours, on a stone in the courtyard,
weeping for the men whom they so dearly loved.

On the 2 1st Germinal the prisoners were brought
before the Tribunal. They were accused, said their
judges, of having conspired against the safety of the
people, and of having wished to destroy the National
Convention, further, of being in the pay of the
foreigner and of having aimed at replacing on the
throne of France the son of Louis XVI.

All defence was useless, even if it had been permitted.
As Chaumette truly said : " You have decided upon
my fate. I await my destiny with calmness."

It was with more than calmness that Lucile heard
that fate pronounced. She had remained perfectly
serene all through the three days' trial, quietly denying
the charges of treason brought against her, yet almost
dreading acquittal, so it seemed to the onlookers.
When the death sentence was passed upon herself and
her companions, a strange, supernatural joy shone in
her eyes.

^' What happiness ! " she cried. " In a few hours I
shall see my Camille again ! "

314 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

And then, so it was said, a spirit of prophecy seemed
to come upon the girl, as she turned to her judges.

" In quitting this earth to which love no longer
binds me," she said solemnly, " I am less to be
pitied than you ; for, at your death, which will be
infamous, you will be haunted by remorse for what
you have done."

Lucile's strange exaltation filled her until the end.
Those who saw her were amazed at her joyful bearing.
Hebert's widow said to her with bitter self-con-
demnation :

" You are lucky ; nobody speaks ill of you : there
is no stain on your character ; you will leave life by
the grand staircase."

When Lucile apologised sweetly to Arthur Dillon
for having aided to bring about his death, the gallant
Irishman laughed at her self-reproach. But when he
tried to find words for his own sympathy, Lucile
interrupted him.

" Look at my face," she said joyfully. " Is it that
of a woman who needs to be comforted ? "

She was dressed all in white, as though for a bridal,
and with a white handkerchief passed over her head
and tied under her chin. She seemed a very child,
for she had cut off her soft, fair hair, and sent it to her
mother with a little note of farewell.

" Good-night, dearest mother. A tear drops from
my eyes ; it is for you. I am going to sleep in peace
and innocence. Lucile."

As they waited for the summons to death, the girl's
courage never failed her.

" They have assassinated the best of men," she said.
" If I did not hate them for that, I should bless them
for the service they have done me this day."

She bowed to Dillon almost merrily as she ascended
the tumbril ; she talked sweetly and calmly to those
who travelled with her along that gloomy road which
led to death.

THE SOUTH WIND 315

Dillon no longer tried to hide his real feelings at the
end. " Long live the King ! " he cried, as he stood
upon the scaffold, and laughed at the outcry of the
mob.

Of Lucile no last words are recorded. She had no
thought of how her bearing would impress the by-
standers, no thought at all beyond the ever-present
consciousness that she was about to rejoin Camille.
No faintest shadow of doubt dimmed that hope. She
passed lightly up the steps of the guillotine, her " grand
staircase," she lay down as directed upon the plank.
Her colour had scarcely changed, and always she
smiled — as one sees a child smile at some inward,
joyful thought.

Very sure it is that death had lost its sting for
Lucile Desmoulins. It is even hard for us to feel the
tragedy of it all, since to her it was no such thing, but
a very joyous journey which should end in " lovers'
meetings."

The tragedy lies here as always with those who were
left, those on whom such overwhelming sorrow and
loss had descended.

In quiet, homely Guise a lonely old man mourned
for all who were nearest and dearest to him, for his
wife, " the half of himself," and for his eldest son, the
brilliant, lovable son who had been his pride. The
letter is still preserved in which M. Desmoulins pleaded
with Fouquier for Camille's life, a letter as noble and
dignified as was the man himself.

" Camille Desmoulins (my son)," he writes, " I speak from
sincere conviction, is a true Republican, a Republican in
feeling, in principles, and, so to speak, by instinct. . . . His
perfect disinterestedness and love of truth have kept him on
a level with the loftiest aspirations of the Revolution. . . .

" Citizen, I ask of you but one thing, in the name of
justice and of our country — for the true Republican thinks
of naught besides — to investigate, and to cause the examining
jury to investigate the conduct of my son, and that of his

3i6 CAMILLE DESMOULINS

denouncer, whosoever he may be ; it will soon be known which
is the true Republican. The confidence I have in my son's
innocence makes me believe that this accusation will prove a
fresh triumph, as well for the Republic as for him."

This letter is dated 15th Germinal ; it was, there-
fore, not received by Fouquier until after the death of
Camille.

It was not for long that M. Desmoulins mourned
his son ; a few months later he too was dead, literally
of a broken heart. At about the same time M. Du-
plessis died also, for the guillotine had killed both
Lucile and her father with one and the same blow.

And now two only were left of that happy little
group — " our dear Daronne " and " the little Horace."
From henceforth Madame Duplessis devoted her life
to the child of Camille and Lucile. She toiled and
schemed untiringly for his interests, and, in spite of
dreary poverty and innumerable obstacles, she managed
to give him a good education and to enrol him in his
father's profession.

Nevertheless, Horace Desmoulins remains, as far
as we are concerned, a colourless, shadowy figure. In
1 8 17 he migrated to Hayti, where he married, and in
that far-off tropical island he died, not long after-
wards, when he was but thirty-three years old —
Camille's age.

Madame Duplessis survived her grandson ; she
lived far into the nineteenth century, a lonely, sorrow-
ful woman. Few sought her out in those humble
lodgings in the Rue Sorbonne, where she dwelt, as
it were, in a land of shadows, in which Camille and
Lucile, her husband, and little Horace, were as real
as the living people about her.

And so we close our story ; for, after all, what more
is there to say ? To some it may seem that this life
of Camille's was indeed a vain shadow, and his death
profitless — that only proves that they have misread,
or we miswritten his history.

THE SOUTH WIND 317

We have tried throughout to portray the man as he
really was, hiding none of his faults, striving not to
exaggerate his virtues. He must needs appear as
weak, emotional, easily moved from one extreme to
the other ; as a modern writer says : " He was the
prey of impulses, the sport of passions, a fascinating
child."

Yet, with it all, and in spite of all, the better one
learns to know Camille, the easier it is to forgive him ;
for he loved, and was loved much.

Moreover, his political ideals were high, although
he pursued them along devious paths. The Republic
of his dreams was a fair thing, a mistress for whom men
might well live and die.

And to those who think that it was but a lost cause
for which Camille gave his life, there can be no better
answer than the words of a decree, passed by the
Council of Five Hundred two years later — words
which form also his most fitting epitaph.

" Considerant que Camille Desmoulins, aussi representant
du peuple, membre de la Convention Nationale, fut conduit
a la mort pour s'etre eleve centre les proscriptions, et avoir
rappele des sentiments d'humanite deja trop longtemps
oublies ; qu'il est instant de venir au secours de ces infor-
tunes, qui ont des droits egaux a la reconnaissance nationale."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

List of Chief Authorities Consulted

" CEuvres de Camille Desmoulins." Editions of Charpentier

and Matton.
" Correspondance de Camille Desmoulins."
*' Camille Desmoulins and his Wife." Jules Claretie.
" Portefeuille de Lucile Desmoulins."
" Etudes biographiques sur Camille Desmoulins et Roch Mar-

candier." Edouard Fleury.
" Political History of the French Revolution." A. Aulard.
" French Revolution." F. von Sybel.

" Historical View of the French Revolution." J. Michelet.
" The French Revolution." Louis Blanc.
" Histoire des Journaux de France, ou un chapitre de la

Revolution Francais de 1789-99." C. de Monseignat.
" The French Revolution." J. H. McCarthy.
" Secret Societies of the French Revolution." U. Birch.
" The French Revolution." J. F. Mignet.
" Travels in France." Arthur Young.
" Lectures on the French Revolution." Lord Acton.
" Lectures on the French Revolution." William Smyth.
" Histoire des Girondins." A. de Lamartine.
" Les Jacobins." H. Taine.

" Robespierre and the Red Terror." Jan ten Brink.
" The Great French Revolution." P. A. Kropotkin.
" Memoires." Madame Roland.
" Revolutionary Biographies." J. Adolphus.
" Letters." H. M. WilHams.
" Memoirs." Dr. Moore.
" The French Revolution." Thomas Carlyle.
" The Men and Women of the French Revolution." P. Gibbs.
" Danton." A. H. Beesley.
" Robespierre." H. Belloc.

319

320 BIBLIOGRAPHY

" Danton." H. Belloc.

"The French Revolution." H. Belloc.

" Vieilles Maisons, Vieux Papiers." G. Lenotre.

" The Tribunal of the Terror." G. Lenotre.

" The Flight of Marie-Antoinette." G. Lenotre.

" Memoirs." B. Barere.

" Maximilien Robespierre." G. H. Lewes.

" Memoirs." Marquis de Barras.

" Histoire Anecdotique du Tribunal Revolutionaire." Charles

Monselet.
" Hommes des Proies." Roch Marcandier.
" Paris in 1789-94." J. G. Alger.
" Glimpses of the French Revolution." J. G. Alger.
" The French Revolution." Thiers.
" The History of Europe." A. Alison.
" Memoirs." H. Sanson.

" Marat, the People's Friend." E. Belfort Bax.
" Reflections on the Revolution in France." Edmund Burke.
" Memoirs." Miot de Melito.
" Memoirs." Mdlle. des Echerolles.
" Walks in Paris." Georges Cain.
" Proces des Dantonistes." H. Robinet.
" Comment se tuent les Republiques." H. Robinet.
" La Famille Sainte-Amaranthe." Madame A. R.
" Journal of a Spy in Paris, 1794." Raoul Hesdin.
" The Public Prosecutor of the Terror." A. Dunoyer.
" Anecdots inedits de la fin du dix-huitieme Siecle."
" Nouveau Voyage de France." C. M. Saugrain.
" Paris." H. Belloc.
" Wanderer in Paris." E. V. Lucas.

INDEX

Abbaye, Prison of the, 84
Achilles, 115

" Actes des Apotres," 135
Acton, Lord, " Lectures on the
French Revolution," 196,

197,319
Adam, L'lle, 183
Adolphus, J., " Biographical

Memoirs," 161, 319
Agrarian Laws, ']6, 78
Alger, J. G., " Glimpses of the

French Revolution," 320
" Paris in 1789-1794," 320
Alison, Sir A., " History of

Europe," 320
Amans, Captain, 302, 312
Amar, 299, 304, 305
" Ami du Peuple," 102, no, 174,

175
" Anecdotes inedites de la fin du

dix-huitieme siecle," 294
Anthoine, F. P. N., 159
Antonelle, 220, 284
A. R., Madame, 43
Arcis-sur-Aube, 182, 226, 229,

269, ±1-]
" Argus, The," 214
Arras, 38, 49
Arsenal, The, 68
" Assassinateurs, The," 118, 119
" August 4th, day of," 83, 84
" August loth, day of," 185, 188

seq., 265, 270, 297
Augustus, 238, 239, 240

Aulard, A., " Political History of
the French Revolution," 28,
81, 170, 174, 201, 243, 319

B

BaiUy, J. S., 55, 158, 160, 161,

173, 178
Barbaroux, C. J. M., 169, 184,

185, 212
Bar^re, Bertrand, 219, 250, 320
Barnave, A. P. J. M., 103, 137,

143, 148, 151, 168, 235, 273,

274
Barras, Marquis de, 320
Bastille, The, 68 seq., 97, 107, 113,

114, 115, 123, 184
Bax, E. Belfort, "Marat, the

People's Friend," 320
Bazire, 293, 296
Beaubourg, 62
Beauharnais, Alexandre, 149
Beesley, A, H., " Danton," 319
Beffroi, 171
Belesme, 98

Belloc, H., " The French Revo-
lution," 196, 319
" Danton," 196, 319
" Robespierre," 319
" Paris," 320
Berardier, Abbe, 24, 125, 127, 128
Bergasse, N., 116
Bernard, 161, 163
Bernese Oberland, The, 64
Berthier, 84

321

322

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Besenval, Pierre Victor B. de,

71, 72
Billaud-Varennes, J. N,, 215, 231,

250, 296, 299, 303
Birch, Una, " Secret Societies of

the French Revolution," 45,

46, 319 .
Blanc, Louis, " The French

Revolution," 242, 319
Boilly, L. L., 122
Bois de Boulogne, 119
Boisguyon, G., 173
Bonnemere, Aubin, 72
Bonneville, 146
Boucher Saint-Sauveur, 158
Bouchotte, 251, 253
Bouille, F. C. A., Marquis de, 144
Bourdon de I'Oise, 257
" Bourgeois Monarchy, The,"

170, 175
Bourg-la-Reine, 38, 112, 130, 183,

186, 188, 264
Bourville, Abbe de, 51
Boverie, 64
Brabant, 100
Bravet, 294
Breard, 213
Brest, 185, 192
Breze, Marquis de, 55, 56
Brink, Jan ten, " Robespierre and

the Red Terror," 319
" Brissot Demasque," 87, 172,

177, 206, 220, 233
Brissot, J. P., 46, 98, 127 seq., 139,

159, 169 seq., 202, 206 seq.,

216, 219, 234, 259
" Brissotins, The," 169
Brittany, 52
Brune, Marshal (Patagon), 131,

159, 262, 263
Brunswick, Duke of, 176, 183
Brutus, 81, 132, 235, 239, 240,

246, 252, 286
Burke, Edmund, " Reflections

on the Revolution in

France," 320

Buzot, 169, 212
Byron, Lord, 92

" Cabran d'Or," 185

Cahiers, The, 47, 48, 68

Cain, Georges, " Walks in Paris,"

_ 23, 24, 320
Caligula, 165
Calvados, 1 85
Calvin, 20
Cambon, 233
Camus, A. G., 118
Carlyle, Thomas, " French Revo-
lution," 103, 133, 140, 319
Carmelite Convent, Prison of,

268
Carnot, L. N. M., 219
Carrier, J. B., 269
Carrousel, Place de, 203
Cateau-Cambresis, 22
Cato, 240
Chabot, Francois, 290, 293, 296,

304
Champ-de-Mars, 56, 65, 71, 113,

114, 123, 158, 184
Champ-de-Mars, Massacre of,

160, 163, 165, 233
Champs Elysees, 6^, 114, 166
Charenton, 185
Charles I, 201
Charpentier, 319
Charpentier, Gabrielle (see

Madame Danton)
Charpentier, Madame, 188
Chateaubriand, F. A., 52, 132
Chatelet, The, 93, 116, 117
Chaumette, Anaxagoras, 229,

231, 233, 241, 284, 313
Chauveau-de-Lagarde, 288, 300
Chenier, Marie- Joseph, 219
Choderlos de Laclos, 158, 159
" Chronicle de Paris," 94
Cicero, 27, 76, 80, loi, 252

INDEX

323

Claretie, Jules, " Camille Des-

moulins and his Wife," 1 9,

32, 40, 64, 104, no, 122,

123, 163, 225, 262, 286, 319
Claviere, 194
" Clemency, Committee of,"

131, 227, 243 seq., 265, 266
Clootz, Anarcharsis, 231 seq., 269
Clos-Payen, 130
Coalition, The, 177, 1 83, 207
Coblentz, 180
Cobourg, 284
CoUot d'Herbois, 248, 255 seq.,

268, 276
Combes, Louis, jS
Commerce, Cour de, 190
Commission of Execution {see

Committee of Public Safety)
Conciergerie, The, 74, 273, 285,

290, 291, 306, 307, 308, 313
Conde, Prince de, 32
Conde, Rue de, 127, 133
Condorcet, J. A. N. de Caritat,

20
Constitution, Committee of, 147
Constitution, The, 80, in, 165,

170, 176, 180, 202, 241, 245
" Contrat Social," The, 244
Corday, Charlotte, 212
Cordeliers, Church of the, 126,

189
Cordeliers Club, 107, 115, 158,

178, 228, 229, 249, 262, 269
Correctional Police Court, 171
" Courier de Provence," 97
Couthon, Georges, 213, 231
Crillon, 116

Cromwell, Oliver, 137, 173
Curtius, 64
Cyneas, 80

D

Danican, General, 67
Danton, Georges-Jacques, 38, 46,
89, 107, no, 115

Friendship with Camille, 133,
134, 140, 144, 146, 148, 159,
161, 169, 178, 182, 185
Organises the rising of August

loth, 188 seq.
Raises troops against the

Coalition, 206 seq.
Retires to Arcis-sur-Aube, 219,

226, 227
Returns to Paris, 229, 230
Loses his influence, 247, 251
Endeavours to make peace
between Camille and Robes-
pierre, 260
Indifferent to danger, 275
Arrested and conveyed to the

Luxembourg, 277 seq.
Hears his accusation, 290
Removed to Conciergerie, 291
Trial of Dantonists, 293 seq.
Sentenced to death, 307
Execution of the Dantonists,
308 seq.
Danton, Madame, 188, 190
Dauphine, Place, 297
Dauphiny, 52
Deforgues, 263
Delaunay, 293, 296
Demosthenes, 289
Denisard, M., 36
Desboisseaux, 294
Desenne (Desein), 53, 244, 250,

272
Desmoulins, Lucie - Simplice -
Camille-Benoist :
Birth of, 19
Statues and portraits of, 20,

43,64
Character of, 23, 25, 39, 40,

109, 317
Personal characteristics of, 35,

36, 43, 44> 131
As a journalist, 82, 87, 88, 102

seq., 138
Education at the College

Louis-le-Grand, 23 seq.

324

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Returns to Guise, 30

Becomes Advocate to the Par-
liament of Paris, 34

His poverty, 36

Introduction to the Duplessis
family, 37

As a Freemason, 45

Attempts to obtain election to
the States-General, 48 seq.

First published pamphlets of,

49. 50, 54

Hears news of Necker's dis-
missal and harangues crowd
in the Palais Royal, 58 seq.

Incites the Parisians to attack
the Bastille, 70

Sudden popularity of, 75 seq.

Publication of " La France
Libre," 76 seq.

Publication of " Discours de la
Lanterne," 82 seq.

Financial difficulties of, 95, 96

His friendship with Mirabeau,

97. 98

Edits " Revolutions de France
et de Brabant," 100 seq.

Suitor of Lucile Duplessis, 106

Joins the Club of the Corde-
liers, 107

Quarrels with Mirabeau, 108

Denounced to National As-
sembly by Victor Malouet,
116

Betrothal and Marriage, 124
seq.

Friendship with Danton, 133

Relations with Mirabeau, 138
seq.

Implicated in affair of the
Champ-de-Mars, l^g seq.

Ceases publication of " Revo-
lutions de France et de
Brabant," 162

Quarrels with Brissot, 170 seq.

Edits " Tribune des Patriotes,"
172

Birth of Horace-Camille Des-
moulins, 181

Implication in the affair of
August loth, 187 seq.

Elected Deputy to the Con-
vention, 199

Publishes " Histoire des Bris-
sotins," 209

Defends Arthur Dillon, 213

Reaction of feeling of, 220 seq.

Publishes " Vieux Cordelier,"
226 seq.

Accused at the Jacobins Club,

233 -f^?-. 247
Defends Philippeaux, 236, 237
Expelled from Cordeliers Club,

249
Denounced by Collot d'Her-

bois, 255
Denounces the " ultras," 268

seq.
Arrest of, 279
Letters to his wife from the

Lvixembourg, 281 seq.
Brought before Revolutionary

Tribunal, 293 seq.
Condemned to death, 306
Execution of, 312
Desmoulins, Anne - Lucile -

Philippe-Laridon :
First meets Camille, 37 seq.
Character of, 41 seq., 122, 218
Diary of, 42
Personal appearance of, 121,

122, 130
Her love for Camille, 106, 123,

124, 219
Royalist libels against, 134, 135
Account of August loth, 187

seq.
Letter to Freron, 266, 267
Grief at Camille's arrest, 280

seq.
Arrest of, 312

Trial and condemnation, 313
Execution of, 314, 315

INDEX

325

Desmoulins, Jean-Benoit-

Nicholas :
His character and position, 19,

20, 21
Nominated for States-General,

49.

Relations with Camille, 94,

125 . .

Warns Camille against voting

for death of Louis XVI, 205
Writes to Fouquier-Tinville,

315
Death of, 316

Desmoulins, Marie - Magdeleine

Godart :
Her character, 21
Death of, 278
Desmoulins, Armand-Jean-Louis-

Domitille du Bucquoy, 21,22
Desmoulins, Lazare-Nicolas-Nor-

bert-Felicite Semery, 21, 22,

217
Desmoulins, Marie-Emilie-Tous-

saint, 22
Desmoulins, Anne-Clotilde-Pela-

gie, 22
Desmoulins, Horace-Camille, 181,

182, i87j 271, 278, 280 seq.,

316
Despagnac, 293
Despois, Eugene, 120
Dessessarts, D., 119
" Dictionnaire Universel de la

France," 47
Diedrichsen, 293
Dillon, Arthur, 43, 213, 214, 215,

234^ 235> 300, 302, 304, 313,

.3i4> 315

" Dillon, Lettre au General,"

215 seq., 234
Diogenes, 83
Directory, The, 208
Dithurbide, 171
Drouet, J. B., 150
Drusus, 232
Du Barry, Madame, 113

Ducancel, 159

Ducray, 307

Dumouriez, C. F., 177, 207, 298,

300
Dunkirk, 102
Dunoyer, A., " Public Prosecutor

of the Terror," 320
Duplain (Saturn), 131
Duplay, 311
Duplessis, Monsieur, 37, 41, 106,

122 seq., 128, 268, 316
Duplessis, Madame, 37, 41, 106,

123 seq., 128, 130, 131, 187,
316

Duplessis, Adele (Annette), 37,

128
Duport, 138, 168

E

EcheroUes, Mademoiselle des, 320

Ecoles, Cafe des, 188

Electoral Committee of Paris, 69,

Elie, Captain, 72
Elizabeth of France, 128
"Emigres," 136, 137, 176
Encyclopaedists, The, 45
" Enrages " {see " Ultras ")
Essarts, Emmanuel des, no

Fabre d'Eglantine, P. F. N., 107,
256, 257, 266, 283, 290, 293,

309. 310
Fauchet, Abbe, 46, 185
Favras, Marquis de, 108, 264
Fenelon, Archbishop, " Maxims

of the Saints," 250
Ferroux, 284

" Festival of the Federation," 1 1 3
Feuillants, Club of, 251
Feuillants, Terrace of, 179
Five Hundred, Council of the,

219, 317
Flesselles, de, 73

326

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Fleuriot-Lescot, 294
Fleury, Edouard, 32, 319
Florence, 302
Fontenay-sous-Bois, 161
Forget, 36
Foucault, 294
Foulon, J. F., 83, 84
Fouquier-Tinville, A. Q., 196,

214, 292, 293, 294, 296, 299,

300 seq., 315, 316
F07, Cafe, 63
" France Libre, La," 53, 75 seq.,

94, 173, 261
Franklin, Benjamin, 28
Freemasonry in France, 45, 46
French Revolution, Causes of, 44,

45.46
First bloodshed in, 65
Proclamation of Republic, 199
Freron, Stanislas (Lapin), 24, 37,

III, 112, 131, 162, 172, 174,

175, 189, 264, 265, 266, 267
Frey, 293, 296, 301
Friends of the Constitution,

Society of, 165
Fusius Geminus, 239

Garde-Meuble, d']

Carney, loi

Gar ran de Coulon, 146

" Gavroche," 104

" Gazette Universel," 233

General Defence, Committee of

{see Committee of Public

Safety)
General Security, Committee of,

248, 276, 299, 305, 306
Gensonne, Armand, 210
Gibbs, Philip, " Men and Women

of the French Revolution,"

174, 198, 220, 319
Girey-Dupre, 171
Girondins, the, 87, 169, 201, 209,

210, 219, 220, 234, 290

Gobel, Bishop, 313
Gobelins Section, 147
Godart, Marie-Joseph-Benoit, 22
Godart, Rose-Flore-Amelie, 33,

34, 216
Godart-Brisieux, 22
Godart-Brisieux, Madame, 32
Gracchi, 232
Grammont, 313
Greve, Place de, 83
Grosse-Beaurepaire, 285
Guadet, M. E., 143, 169, 210, 233
Gueudeville, Abbe, 128
Guise, 19, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 49,

93, 94, 181, 195, 199, 216,

314
Guzman, 293, 301

H

Hamel, Frank, 192

Hampden, John, 28

Harlay, Cour de, 297

Harpe, Rue de la, 75

Hayti, 316

Hebert, J. R., 88, 102, 228, 248,
251 seq., 262, 265, 268 seq.

Hebert, Madame, 313, 314

Hebertists {see " Ultras ")

Herault de Sechelles, M. J,, 275,
284, 290, 292, 293, 295, 300,
309 seq.

Hermann, A. M. J., 294, 295, 296,
298, 299, 300, 305, 307 _

Hervey, John, " Meditations
among the Tombs," 280

Hesdin, Raoul, " Journal of a
Spy in Paris, 1794," 320

" Histoire des Brissotins" ("Frag-
ment de I'Histoire Secrete de
la Revolution "), 27, 198,
209, 210, 211

Homer, 115

Hosea, 156

Hulin, 72

INDEX

327

" Indulgents," party of, 275, 277,

289, 293
'* Insurrection du 31 mai, Adresse

des Jacobins aux," 212
Invalides, Les, 69, 70, 71
Isnard, Max., 169

J

Jacobin Club, 89, 103, 107, 120,
138, 148, 150, 158, 159, 161,
165, 173, 178, 180, 200, 209,
211, 215, 228 seq., 241, 255,
262, 276

Jacobins, Church of the, 159

Job, 224

" Journal de la Cour et de la
ViUe," 135

" Journal des Etats-'Generaux,"

97

" Journal Fran^ais," 200
Journalism, 53, 100, 103, 105, 134
" July 14th, day of," 70, 72
" June 20th, day of," 178, 179
Justice, Committee of, 243
Justice, Palais de, 293, 297, 302,
304, 306

K

Kersaint, G. P. de C, 198
Kropotkin, P. A., " The Great
French Revolution," 319

Lacroix, J. F. de, 281, 290, 293,
300, 304, 305, 310, 311

La Fayette, M. P. R. Y. G. M.,
Marquis de, 28, 144, 147
seq., 153, 160 seq., 1 73, 1 80,
230

Laffrey, 11 1

Laflotte, Alexandre de, 302, 312

Lagrange, 22

Lamartine, A, de, " Histoire des

Girondins," 319
Lambesc, Prince de, 65, 66
Lameth, Charles de, 103, 137,

138, 158, 168, 173, 235
Lameth, Alexandre de, 118, 168
Lamoignon, C. F., 195
Lanthenas, 159
Laon, 48, 127, 199
La Poype, 159
La Rochefoucauld, 46
La Roche jacquelein, Henri du V.,

233
Latour-Maubeuge, M. C. C. F.,

Laudreville, Abbe, 283
Launay, R. B. J. de, 69 seq.
Lebrun, C. F., 194
Lecointre, Laurent, 182
Legendre, Louis, 161, 216, 276,

288, 289
Legislation, Committee of, 277
Legislative Assembly, 145, 146,

147, 164, 168, 199, 201, 233
Lemoine, 22
Lenotre, G., " Flight of Marie

Antoinette," 147, 319
" Tribunal of the Terror," 196,

320
" Vielles Maisons, Vieux

Papiers," 104, 127, 130,

262, 320
Leroy (Dix-Aoiit), 294
Lescure, L. M., Marquis de, 233
" Lettres de Cachet," 80
" Lettres de Mirabeau a scs

Commettants," 97
Lewies, G. H., " Maximilien

Robespierre," 320
Lhuillier, 293, 306
Liberte, Salle de, 293
Liberty, Statue of, 311
Lindet, Robert, 277
Lorme, de, 72
Louis-Quinze, Place, 74
Louis XIV, 80

328

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Louis XV, 80

Louis XVI, 47, 56, 73, 81, 88, 99,

III, 114, 116, 136, 143 seq.,

152, 158, 165, 170, 176 seq.,

194, 200 seq.
" Louis XVI, Opinion upon the

Judgment of," 202
Louis XVII, 206, 303, 313
Louis-le-Grand, College of, 23,

24, 274
Loustalot, Elysee, 119, 120, 123
Louvet de Couvray, J. B., 169,

212
Lucas, E. v., "A Wanderer in

Paris," 320
Lumiere, 294
Lunettes, Quai de, 226
Luxembourg, Gardens of, 38,

106, 270, 271, 281
Luxembourg, Palace of, 189, 266,

281, 286, 288, 302 seq., ■^iz
Lyons, 248, 255

M

McCarthy, J. H., " The French
Revolution," 87, 138, 319

Machiavelli, N, di B. dei, 229

Madelonnettes, Prison of the,
213, 214

Malouet, Victor, 115 seq., 1 29

Mandar, Theophile, 158

Manuel, P. L., 205

Marat, Jean-Paul, 102, no, 112,
115,118, 17^,175, 197, 198,
209, 212, 247, 298, 300

Marcandier, Roch, " Hommes
des Proies," 162, 163, 320

Marck, de la, 140

Marie-Antoinette, 52, 56, 99,
136, 143, 144, 150, 151, 165,
170, 177, 193, 213, 218, 219

Mark Antony, 77, 272

Marseillais Federals, 1 84, 185, 188,
190 seq.

" Marseillaise, The," 185
Marseilles, 102, 112, 139, 162
Masson-Denizot, 294
Massulard, 158
Matton, 286, 319
Maupeou, R. N. A. de, 195
" May 31st, day of," 209, 211
Mercier, L. S., " Nouveau

Tableau de Paris," 89
" Tableaux de Paris," 95, 127

seq.
" Mercure Frangais," 162
Mericourt, Theroigne de, 107,

108, 192, 193
Merlin, Antoine (de Thionville),

182, 200
Michelet, J., " Historical View of

the French Revolution," 1 34,

243, 271, 272, 319
Mignet, J. H., "The French

Revolution," 319
Mint, The, 297
Miot de Melito, "Memoirs,"

263, 320
Mirabeau, Gabriel-Honore de

Riquetti, 46, 51, 55, 80, 85,

94

Friendship with Camille, 96

seq.
Coldness between them, 108

seq.
Influence over Camille, 134
Last days and death, 137 seq.
Mirabeau-Tonneau, 103, 118
Modena, 239
Moleville, Bertrand de, 63
Momoro, 54, 75, 80, 261, 269
Monge, G., 194
" Moniteur, The," 49, 254
Monk, General, 177
Monseignat, Charles de, " His-
toire des Journaux de
France," loi, 104, 319
Monselet, Charles, " Histoire
Anecdotique du Tribunal
Revolutionaire," 320

INDEX

329

Moore, Dr., " Memoirs," 319

Morcy, 22

Moreau de Jonnes, 122

" Mountain, The," 201, 209, 273

N

Nancy, 120, 165

Nantes, 269

Nantouillet, 248

National (Constituent) Assembly,

56,73,80, 81,99, III, 116,

166, 168
National Convention, 168, 198,

199, 201, 203, 205, 210, 211,

236, 243, 269, 272, 289, 304
National Guard, 68, 118, 153,162
National Oath, 1 11
Necker, Jacques, 51, 58, 60, 61,

64, 97, 103
Nero, 165, 202
Neuf Soeurs, Lodge of the, 45
Nicolas, 247 seq.
Nivernais, Hotel de, 95
Normandy, 212
" Notes upon the Report of

Saint-Just," 291
Notre Dame, Cathedral of, 166
Nursia, 239

O

Octavius, 272

" October 5th, day of," 99, 100

" Ode upon the opening of the

States-General," 50
" Orateur du Peuple," 1 12
Orleans, Duke of, 51, 52, 55, 64,

158, 204, 298, 300
Orleans, Regent of, 80
Otriades, 81

Palais Royal, 53, 55, 57, 59, 64,

85,115,159,310
Pancemont, de, 126

Panis, 277

Paris, temper of, in July, 1789,
56, 59, 66, 6-]

Optimism in, 1790, lii

Mourning for Mirabeau in,
140, 141

Attitude after return from
Varennes in, 151

Counter-revolutionary move-
ment in, 157, 165 seq.

Counter-revolutionary move-
ment after execution of
" ultras," 276

Citizens of, demoralised by
executions, 246

Municipality of, 73, 160, 163,
178, 185, 194, 211, 241
Paris, Nicolas-Joseph (Fabricius),

293, 294, 296, 305, 306
Pas Perdus, Cour de, 297
" Patriote Frangais," 129, 171
Patrocles, 115
Paulus Emilius, 74, 116
Peltier, J. S., 24, 135
Perdry, 36
" Pere Duchesne," 88, 102, 228,

229, 249 seq., 268, 269
Perfectibilists, Order of, 45
Perrin, 36

Perry, Sampson, 214
" Peter Pan," 109
Petion, Jerome, 46, 118, 127,.
128, 151, 158, 178, 180, 184,
210, 212
Petitions against Property Suf-
frage Laws, 146, 168
In the Champ-de-Mars, 158,
159, 160, 202
Philippe le Bel, 79
Philippeaux, 236, 251, 255 seq.,
281, 290, 293, 296, 309, 310
" Philosophe au Peuple Fran^ais,

La," 49
Picards, character of, 20
Pitt, William, 229, 240, 251, 284
Plato, 212

330

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Pologne, Hotel de, 37, 42
Pont Neuf, 162, 297
Procope, Cafe (Cafe Voltaire), 37
Proly, 233, 300
Provence, Count of, 206
Provisional Executive Council,

194, 199
Prudhomme, Louis-Marie, 162
Public Safety, Committee of,

208, 216, 227, 238, 247, 250,

254, 262, 269, 275, 276, 294,

296, 301, 302
" Purification," ceremony of,

233, 234
Pym, John, 28

R .

Radziville, Passage, 171

Raimond, 210

Reason, Cult of, 231

" Reflexions sur le 20 Juin,

1792," 180
" Register of Occurrences and

Historical Sketch," 214
Renaudin, Leopold, 294
Republicanism in France, 28, 81,

149, 152, 159, 160, 170, 173,

. I74> 273
Retif de la Bretonne, 135
Reunion-sur-Oise, 31
Revolution, Place de la, 74, 246,

311.

Revolutionary Tribunal, the, 88,
208, 209, 210, 234, 248, 264,
287, 289, 293, 313
" Revolutions de France et de
Brabant," 100 j-^^., iii, 117,
119, 145, 162, 170, 174, 175,
200, 264
" Revolutions de Paris," 120, 162
Robert, 160, 189, 190, 191, 266
Robert, Madame, 189, 266
Robespierre, J. M. L de, 38, 43,
46, 48, 51, 94, 109, no
Defends Camille in the As-
sembly, 117

Attends CamiUe's vi^edding,

127 seq., 134, 150, 158, 168,

173 seq., 185, 186, 188, 209

Inspires " Histoire des Bris-

sotins," 210 seq.
Influences first numbers of
" Vieux Cordelier," 227 seq.
Defends Camille at the Jaco-
bins, 235, 236
Deserts Camille, 243, 249, 255,

257
Denounces Camille at the

Jacobins, 259 seq.

Attacks the " ultras," 269

Signs warrant for the arrest of

the Dantonists, 276, 277,

286, 288, 289, 291, 298, 311

Robespierre, Augustin B. J. de,

25, 256, 257
Robespierre, Charlotte de, 25,

286, 287
Robinet, H., " Proces des Dan-
tonistes," 277, 320
" Comment se tuent les Re-
publiques," 277, 320
Roland de la Platiere, J. M., 177,

179, 194, 199
Roland, Madame Marie, J. P.,

169, 171, 319
" Rolandists, The," 169
Romeuf, 150
Romme, Gilbert, 46
Ronsin, 236, 269
Rossignol, 236
Rouillard, 43
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 42, 45,

I3i> 244, 260
Royal AUemand, Regiment of

the, 65
Ruhl, 277

Sainte-Amaranthe, the family of,

43, 122, 320
Saint-Andre-des-Arcs, Rue de, 37

INDEX

331

Saint-Antoine, Faubourg, 68, 69,

Sainte-Beuve, Charles A., 43
Saint-Cloud, Palace of, 144
Saint-Denis, cathedral of, 203
Saint-Fran9ois, Rue, 54
Saint-Honore, Rue, 74, 274, 309,

Saint-Huruge, Marquis de, 93, 94
Saint-Jean d'Angely, 120
St. John, Gospel of, 83
Saint- Just, A. L. L, de, 25, 113,

215, 2i6, 231, 249, 269, 270
Denounces the Dantonists, 277
Report against them, 289 seq.,

296, 300, 301
Secures their condemnation,

303 seq.
Saint-Malo, 175
Saint-Marceau, Faubourg de, 68,

69, 70, 185
Sainte-Menehould, 150
Sainte-Pelagie, Prison of, 313
Saint-Pierre, J. H. Bernardin de,

131

Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul,

Church of, 19
Saint-Simon, L. H. due de, 20
Saint-Sulpice, Church of, 126,

128
Salle d'Offremont, de la, 68
Sallust, 212
" Sansculotte Jesus," 88, 89, 269,

29s
Sanson, Henri, 105, 308, 311, 312,

320
Santerre, Antoine J., 69, 161, 163,

185
Saugrain, C. M., " Nouveau

Voyage de France," 20, 320
Saumur, 236
Scipio Nasica, 232
Seneca, 200, 212
September Massacres, the, 187,

196
Sergent, Antoine F., 159

Servan de Gerbey, J., 194

Shakespeare, William, 77

Sidney, Algernon, 29, 173, 253

Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph, 168

Sillery, C. A., Comte de Genlis,
127, 128

" Silver Mark " property qualifi-
cation, 146

Simon, 284

Smyth, William, " Lectures on
the French Revolution," 319

Socrates, 284

Soissons, 199

Sombreuil, C. F. V'irot, Marquis
de, 70

Sorbonne, Rue, 316

Sosia, 83

Souberbielle, 294

Sourd, La, 192

" Souvenirs de la Terreur," 43

Sparta, 81

States-General, Convocation of
the, 47
Opening of the, 50 .
Becomes "National Assembly,"

55, 56
Mirabeau's estimate of, 99
Strasburg, 295

Suleau, L. F., 24, 190, 192, 193
" Suspects," Law of, 238, 241
Swiss Guards, 120, 191, 192
Swiss Restaurant, 119
Sybel, Heinrich von, " French

Revolution," 63, 104, 249,

319

Tacitus, 26, 238, 240, 246, 250
Taine, H., " Les Jacobins," 319
Talon, Antoine, 116
Target, G. J. B., 73, 74, 94
Tarquin, 80, 286
Tarrieux de Taillan, 33
TelUer, de, 84

" Temple of the National As-
sembly, the," 107

332

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

Temple, Tower of the, 194

" Tennis Court Oath, The," 54,

55, 179
Terray, Abbe, 135
" Terror, The," 169, 219, 228
Theatre Fran§ais, Rue de, 36,

107, 128, 133
Theatre Frangais, Section of, 146,

164
Thiers, L, A., " Histoire de la

Revolution Frangaise," 177,

320
Topino-Lebrun, F. J.B.,295, 299,

300
Toulon, 112, 131, 132, 264, 265,

266
Tournay, Louis, 72
" Tribune des Patriots, Le," 172,

. 173, i74» ^n

Tricolour, the, 68
Trinchard, 294
Tuileries, Gardens of, d^, 149
Tuileries, Palace of, 99, 149, 151,

179, 189, 193, 194, 302
Tussaud, Madame, 65

U

" Ultras, The," 84, 228 seq., 238,
24s, 247, 249, 250, 269, 276,
300

V

Vadier, M. G. A., 299

Valaze, C. E. du F. de, 169

Valerius Maximus, 268

Vannerie, Rue de la, 83

Varennes, 136, 144, 147, l50,-202

Vendee, La, 207, 217, 236, 237,

257
Vendome, Place, 158
Vergniaud, Pierre V., 169, 205,

212, 233

Vermandois, Electors of, 49, 76
Vernon, Battle of, 212
Versailles, 51, 56, 58, 98, 99, 117
Vertot, R. A., " Revolutions

Romaines," 27
"Vervins, Journal de," 21
" Veto, The," 175, 179
Viefville des Essarts, de, 23, 49,

196
" Vieux Cordelier," 60, 88, 134,

226 seq., 237, 242 seq., 258

seq., 268 seq., 279, 286, 287,

300
Vilate, " Memoirs," 220
Ville, Hotel de, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74,

182, 190, 207
Vincennes, Fortress of, 68
Voltaire, F. M. Arouet de, 45,

231
Vouland, 299, 304, 305

W

Washington, George, 28, 173
Wattignies, Battle of, 219
Weishaupt, the Illuminate, 45
Westermann, General F. J., 292,

2935 29s, 300, 304, 309
Whittier, J. G., 18
Wiege, 32
WilHams, Helen Maria, 62, 209,

319
Wimp fen, General, 212
Witt, Jean de, 253

Young, Arthur, " Travels in

France," 53, 319
Young, Edward, " Night

Thoughts," 280

WILLIAM BRENBON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH